number of packet boats that at one time crossed the Ohio River by the dozens. On February 19, 1904, a Baltimore and Ohio train accidentally crossed the Big Four Bridge, due to engineer Dick Foreman falling asleep and going the wrong way at Otisco, Indiana. The fireman kept shoveling coal and did not pay attention. It was the conductor that finally noticed the error midway across the Big Four Bridge. The wayward train had to back up all the way back to Otisco. On September 12, 1905, the first interurban crossed the Big Four Bridge. On January 14, 1918, two interurbans collided on the Big Four Bridge at 5:30 PM in a blinding snowstorm, killing three passengers (Thomas Alvey, George Greenwald, and Leo Hagan), and injuring twenty aboard. Due to the increasing weight of the rail traffic, contracts were finalized in June 1928 to build a bigger Big Four Bridge, which opened on June 25, 1929. The new Big Four Bridge was built on the piers of the old bridge, a "novel building process", as it sped up the time necessary to build the new bridge; the old one served to reinforce the new one as it was being built. The old piers would still be used, but the falsework was entirely removed. During construction, the Big Four Bridge's usual rail traffic was routed over the Kentucky & Indiana Terminal Bridge. The interurbans that used the Big Four Bridge would instead disembark at Sellersburg, Indiana, and have the passengers board buses into Louisville for the duration of the Big Four's reconstruction. Adjacent Highway Bridge In 1961 the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge was built to carry I-65 over the Ohio River. Because of the location of the Big Four Bridge and the growth of the Kennedy Interchange, the interchange had to avoid the columns that were on the approach to the bridge, causing the interchange to have several two-lane ramps rather than a single stretch of highway, and helped earn the nickname Spaghetti Junction. Ownership In 1988 Oscar Arias, President of Costa Rica, contacted Louisville mayor Jerry Abramson to inquire about buying the bridge to dismantle it and reassemble in Costa Rica, as he believed it would be cheaper to import the bridge than build a new one. At the time the city did not actually own the bridge, and the plan never went through. Post-railway use The Big Four