Editor Notebook

Last week I made the mistake of starting a story in this space but not completing it. When I had used my allotted space I promised to continue the story this week.

I should have known better than to make such a promise and then turn to other work. It is okay to publish a story in segments but those segments should be written in order. Instead I paused a week and now I can’t remember what stories I planned to share this week.

Last week I wrote about Republican River bridges at Superior. The story started with the first bridge approved by the residents of Beaver Precinct in 1874, a year before Superior was platted. I was writing about the cement bridge which replaced a bridge washed out by the 1915 flood when I ran out of space.

The failure of the builders to properly set the bridge pilings on bedrock, insured it would have a short life.

Though not classified with the big floods, the flood of 1923 weakened the bridge. There were load restrictions from then until it fell into the river in 1931.

The loss of the bridge caused local hardships and the roads department responded by moving a floating pontoon-style of bridge to Superior. It was better than nothing but not much.

Automobiles and trucks had largely replaced horses and mules but rural residents were still using draft animals on the farm and frequently wanted to take teams across the bridge.

I don’t know how they did it. When I was about eight-years-old, I wanted to ride my horse to town and participate in the Kiwanis sponsored Kids’ Day Parade. I got up early that morning, gave my horse a bath and had my father trim the animal’s mane and polish its hooves. I dressed in my best riding clothes--polished boots, near new blue jeans and a freshly ironed and starched shirt. I completed my outfit with a western style straw hat and proudly headed for Superior.

My horse had crossed two concrete box culverts, and three bridges by the time he walked onto the river bridge. All was going well, we were nearly two-thirds of the way across the river and hadn’t met or been passed by a vehicle while on a bridge. Superior was in sight and we had only two bridges to go when he stepped on a metal expansion plate. The metal plate rang hollow like the gutter covers around the Superior Auditorium do when crossed with a bicycle.

The horse spun around and took off for home. Once we were off the bridge, I was able to stop the horse but he refused to go back to the bridge. It took adult persuasion to convince him it was safe to cross the bridge.

After the parade, I tied the horse in my grandparents’ yard and visited with them until afternoon. When I headed home, the horse was so pleased to get safely out of town and across the river, he ran the rest of the way home.

I never saw the cement bridge but my grandfather said it was longer and wider than the bridge that replaced it.

I’ve been told the replacement bridge was expected to be a temporary solution until an overpass was constructed over the Burlington and Missouri Pacific railroads. The upgrading of the railroad crossing and rerouting of the highway would have required a new bridge but that never happened.

The replacement bridge made of steel and concrete was probably hastily constructed and concrete rubble from the failed concrete bridge was not removed from the river. Large pieces of concrete remained downstream from the replacement bridge.

Those pieces caused water swirls which scoured out holes in which large catfish liked to hide. It was common to see fishermen standing on the bridge trying to catch the lunkers. When vehicles tried to meet on the bridge, the fishermen would step over the banister and stand on the natural gas pipeline which hung on downstream side of the bridge. I never fished from the bridge but I did on occasion stand on the pipeline to let traffic pass. I thought it safe, but after reading of a man knocked off the Bloom Street mill race bridge by an earth moving machine, I no longer consider my action to have been safe. Perhaps the mirrors of a truck hugging the banister could have knocked me or a fisherman into the river.

When the dam was in place, that may not have been such an unpleasant experience on a hot summer day but the river wasn’t that deep when I stood on the gas line.

When my father was a youngster, he and his friends liked to attempt to hand walk across the river by hanging onto rods which were part of the bridge’s under structure. Seldom did they get across before one of the rods turned sending them into the water below. Because of the dam and less water being used for irrigation, the river was deeper then.

I remember listening to guys who liked to hand fish talk about trying to catch the big catfish that lived in the hole near the bridge. I particularly remember the conversation about trying to breath through a hose which they hoped would allow them to venture further down into the hole. It is a wonder somebody wasn’t lost in that hole.

When I operated the West Third Street car wash, I dumped the collected mud in the field near where the dam’s head gates had been. On summer nights, I sometimes went down to the river to wash up after cleaning out a mud pit.

One night a construction crew had gotten off work early and was relaxing by the river. When one of the women saw me head toward the water, she called out a warning to stay away from the concrete rubble. She hadn’t done so the night before and was frightened when she stepped into water over her head.

Another time I was helping a Superior High School lifetime sports class with canoe lessons. The class had put the canoes in upstream with a plan to take them out at the Highway 14 bridge. After the short canoe trip down a shallow river, the students were to return to their afternoon classes. Not knowing how to follow the channel, they had trouble with the canoes being stopped by shallow water and frequently had to get out and drag the canoes to deeper water.

Most of the students didn’t follow orders to dock on the right bank and instead went to the left bank where it looked to be easier to haul the canoes out. To their surprise, several of the students stepped into the hole and were soaked.

That hole is now just a memory. When the current bridge was built, the rubble left by the old bridge was cleared away and the deep hole disappeared.

In the last years of the temporary bridge, the concrete deck was failing. Sections would drop into the river below creating the need for a repair job. A state highway department employee once said, “As long as that bridge is there, I have job security.” That was probably true because when the river neared flood stage, the pilings caught copious amounts of trash which had to be cleared away.

It was good news for motorists when the current bridge replaced the “temporary bridge” used for about 50 years. Now many motorists are hardly aware of crossing the river. The temporary bridge was the location of many wrecks and a few fatalities. I recall times when vehicles sideswiped, crashed into the banisters and even missed the bridge and landed in the river. At least one crash caused a leak in the natural gas line.

I’m not sure what all may have been built in the bridge area. The port of entry was once located near the bridge. The highway department now has an oil storage tank at the former port site. Remnants of the dam which diverted water to power first a flour mill and later electrical generators are still visible. When the dam was in use, there were roads from the highway to the dam on both sides of the river.

There apparently was once a large dug well near the river crossing and a creamery may have been located in the area. A warranty deed was recorded on May 28, 1898, which transferred ownership of one acre of land near the where the dam was built to the Superior Creamery Company. I don’t know anything about the Superior Creamery Company but the Henningsen Produce Company once owned more land near the dam’s head gates. Perhaps the Henningsen company may have had some tie to the creamery. The property was 8 rods wide and 20 rods long.

There’s another mystery in Superior that may connect with that creamery and the dam.

One of the largest of Superior’s old water mains is located west of Central Avenue and south of the Burlington railroad yard. Why was that line installed? Nothing exists today to explain why that size of main was needed. Did it deliver water to a plant located west of the current city? Perhaps it was built to bring water into the city from either the dam or large well mentioned earlier in today’s installment?

Likely many of the questions will never be answered.