On April 10, 1899, a bridge over the Yenisei was opened, becoming the first in Russia and the second largest span on the Eurasian continent, reaching 145 meters.

In the late 19th century, builders of the Trans-Siberian Railway faced a serious obstacle in the form of the great Siberian river Yenisei. Professor Lavr Proskuryakov from the Moscow Technical School took on the challenge and developed a project for a railway bridge over the river in 1895. That same year, engineer Evgeny Knorre arrived in Krasnoyarsk to oversee the construction of this unique structure.

Three years after the start of construction, the bridge successfully passed its first production tests, and on March 28, 1899, the first passenger train crossed it. In 1900, the bridge, alongside the Eiffel Tower, was awarded the Grand Prix and a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris for "architectural excellence and magnificent technical execution." Later, scholars referred to the Krasnoyarsk railway bridge as "the pinnacle of human engineering thought." Lavr Proskuryakov was born into a large peasant family and, thanks to his excellent studies, enrolled in the St. Petersburg Institute of Transport, graduating in 1884. During this time, his first publications appeared.

One of the outstanding achievements of Russian bridge construction was Proskuryakov's bridge over the Amur near Khabarovsk, measuring 2590 meters, which was opened on October 5, 1916. In honor of the heir to the throne, the bridge was named Alexeyevsky.

Proskuryakov was the first to propose using a statically determinate triangular truss and later developed parabolic and polygonal bridge girders with a sprengel truss. He also proposed cantilever and arch girders for railway bridges. The methods of teaching structural mechanics introduced by Proskuryakov are still used in modern higher education.