This Is How Many People Died Building The Mackinac Bridge

I'll start this with a morbid interesting fact: back in 221 B.C. when the Great Wall of China was being made, over 400,000 people died during the walls' construction. Working conditions were so brutal that if workers rested on the wall, the wall would be constructed on top of them, burying them inside the wall. 

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This thankfully did not happen when the Mackinac Bridge was being constructed in 1957, but there were plenty of perils involved with building a bridge as massive as the Mighty Mack over such a long body of water.

So, how many people died while building the Mackinac Bridge?

Building The Bridge

Surprisingly, this information comes from the Mackinac Bridge Authority (MBA) itself, the organization in charge of maintaining and handling all things Mackinac Bridge. In the Q&A section on their website, two questions were completely dedicated to deaths associated with building the bridge.

• Is it true that workers fell into the concrete supports and could not be retrieved?
• How many people died during the construction of the Mackinac Bridge?

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Unlike the Great Wall of China, there are no bodies inside the Mackinac Bridge, however, 5 people died while the bridge was being constructed, and we know how it happened too:

• One died in a diving accident
• One fell in a caisson while welding
• One fell into the water and drowned
• Two fell from a temporary catwalk near the north tower, falling 550 feet.

The MBA also gave the names of the workers who died while working:

• Frank Pepper, September 16, 1954
•  James R. LeSarge, October 10, 1954
• Albert Abbott, October 25, 1954
• Jack C. Baker, June 6, 1956
• Robert Koppen, June 6, 1956

Obviously, the best outcome is no lives lost during a construction of this scale, but considering the time period and working conditions back then, that's not a bad number.