Columbia Bridge Works

Columbia Bridge Works was known in its earlier years simply as D. H. Morrison, the name of its founder beginning in 1848. Then, when his son joined, as D.H. & C.C. Morrison. The Company was renamed the Columbia Bridge Works of Dayton Ohio around 1867-1868. Upon David Morrison's death of lung cancer in 1882, the company was reorganized around his sons as the Columbia Bridge Co. but, for all practical purposes, the company remained the same. The company failed in early 1890 and its assets were acquired by Andrew Carnegie. Its equipment was shipped Pittsburgh, PA. The company name existed after the turn of the 20th century but ownership isn't presently known.

Because many of CBW/CBCo.'s bridges are structurally and esthetically distinctive they are recognizable without secondary documentation or plaques. However, the company's more traditional work and their subcontracting work (especially their railroad bridges) are rarely identified without supporting evidence (no Morrison/CBW/CBCo. railroad bridges listed on this site as of November 15, 2021). This, combined with the miniscule survival rate of bridges from the period of CBW's existence, an incomplete and partially dispersed archive, combined with little national attention paid to bridges that weren't on the scale of the Eads bridge or the Roebling giants, means much of the company's history and work product has faded away and is unaccounted for.

Presently (November 15, 2021), the company is known to have built bridges in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The company bid on jobs and may have built bridges in Massachusetts and Long Island, New York with circumstantial evidence for many other states, including much of the south, and other states such as Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey and Connecticut. States such as Michigan, Wisconsin and 'mainland' New York seem to also be likely candidates but no evidence has been found to date.