Our Land and Country—1892
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y., AND HER GREAT BRIDGE.

This is the largest city between Albany and New York, being about seventy miles from either. It was incorporated in 1801, and is on the east bank of the Hudson River, the railroad of that name, crowning an elevation some two hundred feet above the river, and in the midst of a rich agricultural region. The manufactures comprise some of the heaviest description, including foundries, furnaces, rolling-mills, breweries, tanneries, and others in great variety. Vassar College, one of the most successful and celebrated female educational institutions in the world, is located just outside of the city. Poughkeepsie became a city, by charter, in 1854, and has now a population approaching 24,000. The most notable feature in the recent history of the place is the erection of the bridge across the Hudson, which is one of the great bridges of the world, the object of the structure being to deliver coal into the interior of Massachusetts and other New England 'States as cheaply as by water to the seaboard towns. It is five hundred feet long, one hundred and twenty feet high above the pile foundation, one hundred and ten feet wide on the base, and seventy feet wide on top; total height from bottom of piles to top of traveller, three hundred 'and forty feet. The material of the bridge is "mild steel," the superior value of which, for works of this description, is declared on the authority of the most eminent engineers to have been fully demonstrated; and in this case its successful adaptation has been proved, to the satisfaction of all, by the tests of traffic and storm, through years. The impetus given to the prosperity of Poughkeepsie by this superb bridge has not disappointed its projectors, and its span of the Hudson is most picturesque.