The Eagle Avenue lift bridge, the first of Cleveland’s many iconic vertical lift bridges, will finally come down this winter, but one small piece of it will live on thanks to a dedicated local historian and YouTuber.
His name is Geoffrey Moreland, a Medina resident who spends much of his free time researching the civil engineering that powered Cleveland’s industrial heyday.
Through a mix of persistence and luck, he managed to salvage the Eagle Avenue lift bridge’s main control panel. Calling it the bridge’s heart isn’t too far off, he said. From sounding roadway warning chimes and lowering entrance gates to raising and lowering the span itself to make way for passing ships, all of the bridge’s functions interlocked through the control panel.
Now, Moreland is trying to bring the panel back to life, not just by restoring it, but by collecting photos, documents and stories of those who worked and travelled on the bridge during the seven decades it operated.
‘Anything old iron’
Moreland’s interest in Cleveland’s old bridges ironically began when he was away. While enlisted in the Air Force in his early twenties, he was stationed in a handful of bases in the American southwest.
“They were really cool in their own ways,” he said. “But the reality was that they didn’t have the transportation and engineering and, you know, the Rust Belt factor, and I really missed it.”
After five years of service, Moreland moved home to Medina in 2019. He’d often find himself heading north on I-71 toward Cleveland. At the sight of the city’s bridges, he’d think to himself: “Yeah, this is what it’s all about.”
“I just fell in love with it,” he said. “Anything old iron is amazing.”
Moreland made time between working as a firefighter and running a fire prevention business to feed his budding passion. He started working on his YouTube channel, Truss & Rivets, and dove into his first projects restoring small railroad signals and vintage tractors.
The death of Cleveland’s first vertical lift bridge
When news outlets reported the impending demolition of the Eagle Avenue lift bridge in 2023, Moreland was gutted. It’s Cleveland’s first lift bridge, built in the 1930s. And its design is rare, the crown jewel of a firm founded by the inventor of the lift bridge himself: John Alexander Low Waddell.
Cleveland still has four lift bridges in operation, carrying cars over the river at West Third Street, River Road, Carter Road and Columbus Road. There’s also a swing bridge, which moves horizontally, on Center Street.
Cars travelled across the Eagle Avenue lift bridge, a notable feature of Scranton Peninsula, until 2005, when the city closed it down and locked its span nearly 100 feet above the Cuyahoga River. The city hasn’t maintained it much since then, so demolition became inevitable. An inspection report in 2021 noted that, with many significant components of the bridge corroded and damaged, a major wind storm could threaten the whole structure. The report recommended only demolition or top-to-bottom renovations as long-term solutions.
Since the city settled on demolition in 2023, the project has faced a handful of delays. The latest from the Ohio Department of Transportation, which is overseeing the project, is that the bridge’s span will be lowered onto barges, taken apart and carried away on the river as early as January 2027 when freighter traffic is slower.
“Any transportation engineer, they always say things aren’t made like they used to be, and that’s very true,” Moreland said. “Things were built to last. I mean, that bridge lasted from 1931 to 2005, and, realistically, could have been longer if more money was thrown at it. It’s never going to happen like that again.”
Moreland visited the Eagle Avenue lift bridge to take some drone footage for a video in early 2025, and after he talked with contractors on the site, they gave him a closer look inside the bridge’s control room. His eyes landed on an olive green control panel, its red glass indicator lights like jewels shimmering beneath layers of graffiti.
“If there’s one thing I’m going to save, it’s gonna be this,” he recalls thinking at the time.
Saving the control panel
After a few emails and phone calls with ODOT, Moreland got the OK to save the panel, but he had to work it out with the contractors. The project manager was very receptive, but, even so, Moreland regularly made the hour drive to the bridge. He had to make sure the control room, attached to the elevated span, was still there.
Finally, the day came. The crew was taking everything off the span of the bridge, including the control room. Coincidentally, one of Moreland’s lifelong friends worked for the demolition contractors, and he was assigned to the bridge that day.
Moreland sent him a picture of the panel and asked if he could grab it. Later that day, his phone buzzed. His friend sent him a picture of the roughly 450-pound control panel in his garage. He had stopped his co-workers just as they were pulling out tools to cut it up, he said. They instead hoisted it down to street level intact, but they had to drop it down the last 15 or so feet.
More than a cosmetic restoration
The panel is safe at Moreland’s house now, but it has been dented and covered in spray paint over the two decades that it sat unused. For now, he’s doing his research on it, trying to find more about the companies that made its different components so he can try to source original parts for the restoration.
His most recent purchase for the project is an overhead lamp that originally lit up the panel. It was missing by the time he got it, but he was able to track down just a single original one online.
Moreland has confirmed that his control panel is not the original panel from the ‘30s. Based on some of its manufacturer markings, he estimates it dates back to the ‘50s or ‘60s. He’s still trying to track down exactly when it was added to the bridge.
Ideally, he wants to get the control panel functional again. He’s been tossing around a novel idea: connecting the panel to a scaled-down model of the Eagle Avenue lift bridge. That way, the panel can be used to move the tiny bridge up and down. Paired with a trove of photos, videos, personal accounts and documents related to the bridge’s history that he has amassed, Moreland realized he has all the components for an interactive museum exhibit.
‘I’d like them to have a home’
The control panel is not Moreland’s only museum-worthy piece, either. His backyard features a working railroad crossing that he re-wired himself, a meticulously restored Thunderbolt air raid siren, a collection of mechanical railroad bells, and a handful of other odds and ends.
“I like things that make noise and light up, of course,” he said.
So he figured: Why not start a museum? He came up with a name, the Cleveland Museum of Engineering and Transportation, and built a website. Now, he’s trying to put a board together and start raising money to make it happen. He doesn’t have a location, timeline, or any other details nailed down yet.
“Right now, I’m just grabbing any artifact I can with the promise that it’s going to be restored and put in storage for the time being,” he said. “I’d consider loaning them to any museum that wanted them, but ultimately I’d like to have them in a home.”
To Moreland, there’s a kind of battle going on in Cleveland between the city’s past and its future. He understands why the Eagle Avenue lift bridge and other historical structures need to come down, but he questions what gets lost when they do.
“Progress has to happen. People want to move into the city. It’s a great place to live now,” he said. “But we are losing what we have as far as history. That’s why I’m so keen on trying to save as much as I can.”
