The Potomac River once had a suspension bridge

Crossing the Potomac River between DC’s Palisades neighborhood and North Arlington, there have been eight bridges since 1797. For much of the 19th Century, the crossing was a literal chain suspension bridge.

Today’s bridge, mostly built in 1938, is a steel girder bridge common to American highways since the early 20th Century. People crossing over it can be forgiven for wondering “where are its chains?”

More propely the question is “when” not “where,” and the answer is “from 1808 until 1840,” when three different iterations of the bridge used a chain suspension design, and gave rise to the name that’s still in use today. Augustus Kollner’s drawing at the top of this post shows the third and final of the suspension bridges.

If you want to know more, Wikipedia provides a nice summary of the history of the eight bridges.