In 1884 Eads received perhaps the most distinguished honor of his career--the award of the Albert Medal. As it came only two or three months after the report on the Mersey, it was undoubtedly due to that as its immediate cause, although the Jetties were almost specifically named as the reason for this honor,--and Eads had not by any means lacked even earlier appreciation in England. Three years before, at a meeting of the British Association, he had been urged, nay pressed, to deliver an impromptu address on his works, both completed and projected. Nevertheless, it was not until after the Mersey report that the Albert Medal was conferred upon him. This medal, founded in 1862 in memory of the Prince Consort, is awarded annually by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. It was in Eads's case awarded "as a token of their appreciation of the services he had rendered to the science of engineering," to the engineer "whose works have been of such great service in improving the water communications of North America, and have thereby rendered valuable aid to the commerce of the world." He was the second American citizen and the first native-born American to receive this medal.
Of course he belonged to many scientific organizations. He was a member of the Engineers Club of Saint Louis, and for two years president of the Academy of Science there; he was also a member of the American Geographical Society, of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Great Britain, and of the British Association, and of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce; a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and a member, fellow, and for a year vice-president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
He was now a person whose return from Europe, with plans for river improvement, and news about a fresh engineering scheme, was an item in the small as well as the large newspapers. For, since the Jetties were finished, he had a new scheme,--a decidedly new one it seemed to most people,--though, as formerly, he made no pretense of having originated the idea. Instead of resting content, now that he was almost sixty,--rich, and honored, and frail,--instead of resting content on his laurels of the gunboats, the Bridge, the Jetties, he was as active as ever, with the hope of opening more roads to commerce and prosperity. The publication of the proceedings of De Lesseps's Interoceanic Canal Congress in 1879 gave Eads an opportunity to propose, in a letter to the New York "Tribune," his own project for spanning the isthmus. The Tehuantepec route from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific would be, in the general lines of travel, about 2000 miles shorter than the Panama route, or 1500 miles shorter than the Nicaragua. And it was at Tehuantepec that Eads proposed building, not a canal, but a ship-railway. The proposition was astounding. It certainly suggested very picturesque visions of transportation; but at first sight it did not sound very practicable. However, Eads held that it presented six great and purely practical advantages: First, it could be built for much less than the cost of a canal. Secondly, it could be built in one quarter of the time. Thirdly, it could, with absolute safety, transport ships more rapidly. Fourthly, its actual cost could be more accurately foretold. Fifthly, the expense of maintaining it would be less than for a canal. Sixthly, its capacity could be easily increased to meet future requirements.