Amasa Stone, Jr. was an American industrialist who is best remembered for having created a regional railroad empire centered in the U.S. state of Ohio from 1860 to 1883. He gained fame in New England in the 1840s for building hundreds of bridges, most of them Howe truss bridges. After moving into railroad construction in 1848, Stone moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1850. Within four years he was a director of the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad and the Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula Railroad. The latter merged with the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, of which Stone was appointed director. Stone was also a director or president of numerous railroads in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan.
Amasa Stone
Cornelius Vanderbilt.
John D. Rockefeller in 1885.
Cenotaph over the grave of Amasa Stone at Lake View Cemetery.
A Howe truss is a truss bridge consisting of chords, verticals, and diagonals whose vertical members are in tension and whose diagonal members are in compression. The Howe truss was invented by William Howe in 1840, and was widely used as a bridge in the mid to late 1800s.
The Park's Gap Bridge, Berkeley County, West Virginia, built in 1892
William Howe
Vertical posts pass through diagonal braces and an angle block to reach the lower chord of the Jay Bridge in Essex County, New York
One type of angle block for use in a Howe truss bridge