Even before the first Hennepin Avenue suspension bridge spanned the main river channel, smaller bridges had been built to connect Nicollet Island to the east bank of the river. The early settler and entrepreneur Franklin Steele staked a claim on the east side of the river near the Falls in July 1838, anticipating that the area would soon be opened by the government for acquisition by private landowners. In 1847, his crews built a dam across the channels from the east bank to Hennepin Island and then to Nicollet Island. This dam powered a sawmill he had built at the north end of Hennepin Island. The dam served another useful purpose, though, in acting as a sort of bridge to bring pedestrians half-way across the river from the east bank. From that point, Steele operated a rope-drawn ferry service to carry passengers to the west bank. In 1853, he built a rough wooden beam span bridge from the east bank to the downstream end of Nicollet Island at Bay Street (now East Hennepin Avenue).

Engineering for this bridge type

As the milling district on the west side of the Falls grew, so did a complex of railyards to facilitate shipment of raw materials and finished goods. The Minneapolis Western Railroad was incorporated in 1884 specifically to serve the flour mills, and by 1891 it had started building riverside yards just downstream of the mills. In 1887, it built an iron truss bridge to serve the future railyard; this bridge followed a diagonal alignment across the river and to bring trains to its railyards along the river and leaving the east bank at 8th Avenue Southeast and reaching the west bank at 11th Avenue South. It was acquired by the Great Northern Railroad in 1928 and demolished in 1952.