Mill Street Bridges History

August 24, 1951, Twin City News-Record

The history of the bridges at Mill Street at times reminds me of an old Rube Goldberg cartoon, which for you younger folk, featured elaborate machines performing simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways, sort of like the classic Mouse Trap game, we played as kids.  In other words, why make it easy...let's have steep banks and for an extra challenge, let's make it a floating bridge so you can get wet along the way and perhaps spook the horses because the thing is moving in seasick-inducing fashion!  But they persevered as you can see and though its condition had worsened until the end when cars had to drive ten feet apart so as to not overload it, the new bridge apparently came just in time.  I just hope the previous labor-intensive bridge tenders were given the chance to learn the new modern methods of opening the new bridge.