(Jangly guitar music) - [Narrator] 20 miles southeast of Valparaiso, a bridge spans the Kankakee River, connecting Porter County on one, side to Jasper County on the other.

And while the picturesque setting attacts visitors, it's the bridge's mysterious origin that always gets mentioned.

- What I've heard and what's said on the placard out there is that this is from the 1893 Ferris Wheel.

- Looks like it could be possibly.

- I don't see it, looking at some of those pictures, but maybe they reconfigured everything.

- [Narrator] That's right.

Local legend says JD Dunn constructed the bridge out of salvaged pieces of a Ferris wheel, and not just any Ferris wheel, but the very first one.

An invention of George Washington Gale Ferris for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, AKA, the World's Fair in Chicago.

To get to the bottom of this history mystery, we head up the road and across the state line to learn about the rise and fall of the Ferris Wheel.

- I am Paul Durica.

I'm the director of exhibitions at the Chicago History Museum.

The Chicago World's Fair wasn't the first world's fair.

But the biggest rival to what they were planning to do in Chicago was a World's Fair that had been held in Paris in 1889.

And we still remember that fair today because its most lasting monument, the Eiffel Tower was created for it.

So when people began to think about holding the fair here in in Chicago, they needed something that could out-Eiffel Eiffel.

- [Narrator] In the 1890s, Chicago was in an architectural renaissance, a time when the secrets of steel were becoming common knowledge.

That knowledge, paired with mass amounts of immigrant labor and some imagination made skyscrapers possible.

Chicago was becoming a world class city and being the site of the next world's fair, Chicago needed a world class idea.

- The director of works at the World's Columbian Exposition was a Chicago based architect by the name of Daniel Burnham.

And Burnham basically put out a challenge to the nation's engineers.

- [Narrator] Many aspiring engineers responded, but one bridge builder's idea quickly rose to the top.

- [Paul] Among the people who heard that challenge was a young engineer based in Pittsburgh by the name of George Washington Gale Ferris.

He was really focused on building bridges.

I mean, that's what people were doing when you were working with iron and steel, and that's really where his expertise lay.

But the Ferris wheel called for something else.

Once he has this idea for a wheel, he immediately communicates it to to Burnham in a telegram.

And what's interesting is initially the fair is very receptive to the idea and they basically grant him a concession to move forward with it.

But then as the winter of 1892 is unfolding, the fair's planners begin to get cold feet.

They think on the one hand, this is gonna be very, very expensive.

How are they gonna finance it?

And then secondly, will it actually work?

- [Narrator] Chicago backed out of the contract to build the giant wheel, but Ferris didn't give up.

He secured the necessary funding and assured the planners his wheel would be a hit.

- [Paul] Initially, he has the concession revoked from him.

He's able to convince the planners of the fair to give it back to him, but that's not until December of 1892, and the fair is supposed to open in May of 1893.

So that gives George Ferris a very short window in which to build this immense wheel that's gonna be 264 feet tall.

- [Narrator] Ferris knew he needed help and immediately sent a letter to his friend, Hoosier engineer Luther Rice, asking him to work as his construction foreman, overseeing the Herculean task of building the first Ferris wheel - [Paul] Begins:"My Dear Rice", doesn't even call him by his first name or Mister, and he basically tells him, you know, I've got this idea to build this enormous wheel.

I need somebody who can be there on site at all times and to supervise its construction and I think you're the best person for it.

And Rice arrives early in 1893 while it's still the dead of winter, and begins work on basically excavating the site where the Ferris wheel will eventually arise.

So within the space of about six months, they're able to build the very first Ferris wheel.

- [Narrator] There were people and animals, art, and culture from all around the globe.

From Wrigley's chewing gum to Cracker Jack, from the dishwasher to the electric chair.

All sorts of innovators and inventions were introduced at the World's Fair.

But the star of the show was the Ferris Wheel.

- [Paul] As the Ferris Wheel neared completion, people who were already attending the World Fair could look up in awe.

They'd never seen an engineering marvel like this.

Its axle was at about 114 feet off the ground and it looked like an immense bicycle wheel.

And suspended from that wheel were 36, almost like train cars.

Ferris wheels today, they could seat maybe about two people or four people, but these were immense cars that could fit up to 60 people.

It took 20 minutes for a single rotation around the wheel, and if you paid the 50 cents fee to ride the wheel, you would get two rotations.

So it'd be about a 40 minute experience.

One journalist was invited to the event and got to go on the wheel, and he described it as being almost as if in a dream, people had never really had this kind of experience before.

- [Narrator] The Ferris wheel was a huge success, but as the World's Fair comes to a close, it's clear the dream is over.

- [Paul] By the time that the Fair closes on October 30th, 1893, 1.4 million people have taken a ride on that very first Ferris wheel.

Unfortunately for Ferris, there's a major economic recession that sweeps across the country and people don't really have that much money to spend on on amusements anymore.

- [Narrator] Shortly after the fair ended, a fire swept through the entire site and destroyed most of the buildings.

The Ferris wheel was moved to a park near Wrigley Field, but was financially unsuccessful.

By 1896, Ferris had died of typhoid fever and Luther Rice oversees the wheel's transport to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

- They put all the parts on a train and they send it down to St. Louis.

Again, it's a very popular attraction at that particular World's Fair.

Thousands upon thousands of people ride on it, but at the end of the fair, what are they gonna do with it?

You've got this giant wheel in St. Louis and the city doesn't wanna maintain it.

So that's when the Ferris wheel meets its ultimate fate.

One of the last things that they tear down is the Ferris wheel.

They wait all the way until May of 1906 to begin the demo work on it.

And basically what they do is they just fill it with a bunch of dynamite and and try to blow it up.

But the Ferris wheel was so solidly built and designed that the first blast doesn't actually bring it all the way to the ground.

It just sort kind of like lurches forward.

And so they have to like set a second round of explosives, and it's still kind of partially standing.

But finally, after a third round of dynamite, the wheel implodes and it collapses, and leaves in its wake a whole field of strewn and broken and bent steel and iron.

Now, the wheel was originally designed so that you could salvage the material, you know, use pieces and parts of it to possibly build bridges and other structures.

But the metal is so damaged after it's been dynamited that all that the company can do is basically pick up all the parts off the ground and then ship them back to Chicago where the metal can be melted down and then repurposed.

But if any part of the Ferris wheel survives today, it's not in its original form.

- [Narrator] Could Dunn's bridge be made out of molten Ferris Wheel metal?

Others have speculated it's constructed from pieces of one of the World's Fair ruined buildings.

Though there's no definitive evidence that the stories are true, the legend persists.

If you visit Dunn's Bridge, a placard outlines the different theories.

And if you visit Chicago, look for traces of the 1893 World's Fair.

The Museum of Science and Industry is housed in one of the few buildings that survived.

And the Midway Plaisance?

Now an open grassy park.

While the physical remains have since been lost, it's no doubt the Ferris wheel lives on around the world, and you can thank a Hoosier for building it.

- [Paul] Luther Rice was actually there for the entire world's Columbian Exposition.

He had an office right on the fairgrounds outside the Ferris wheel.

They'll refer to Luther Rice as the builder of the first Ferris wheel.

George Ferris designed it, but was Luther Rice, who was there every day actually overseeing its construction.

There are no surviving actual George Ferris Ferris wheels.

What's interesting is in the 21st century, Ferris wheels have started getting big again.

You're getting at ones that much more closely fit the vision that George Ferris had, of this immense wheel that gives you this truly kind of panoramic view of the world around you.

- [Narrator] For more Across Indiana stories, go to wfyi.org/AcrossIndiana.