While growing up on a farm in Pennsylvania, Charles Ellet, Jr. scraped through odd jobs, but saved enough money to finance an education at the École nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in France. After attending four months of lectures, he toured Europe before returning to the United States as the only native-born American with European education in engineering. Ellet announced his ambitions to build suspension bridges in his country of birth by proposing to span the Potomac River with one. His proposal was ignored; few were willing to heed a young, inexperienced and impetuous engineer. To gain experience, Ellet started to work on railroads and canals, and later became the chief engineer on the James River and Kanawha Canal project. He further improved his reputation by contributing articles about suspension bridges to respected engineering journals, such as "American Railroad Journal"; eventually, Ellet built his first suspension bridge over the Schuylkill River, Pennsylvania, in 1842.