Days before the Brooklyn Bridge officially opened in 1883, the first carriage to cross it carried a woman with a live rooster on the seat beside her as a symbol of victory. Her name was Emily Warren Roebling, and she had spent a decade managing the completion of the greatest engineering feat of the 19th century from the shadows. In this episode we piece together her biography from historical sources, from a childhood in Cold Spring, New York, to a legacy that is still being rediscovered today.

We follow her education supported by her brother, General Gouverneur K. Warren, her Civil War meeting with engineer Washington Roebling, and the European honeymoon spent studying caissons. Then come the twin catastrophes that reshaped the project: John A. Roebling's death from tetanus after a ferry accident and Washington's crippling caisson disease.  ...