Bridges of Crawford County

Classmate Dennis Pelock, the Crawford County Highway Commissioner, has responsibility for two of Wisconsin's 15 bridges that are the same design as the I-35 bridge that collapsed last week up the Mississippi River in Minnesota. The Wisconsin State Journal reports that the two highway 82 bridges across the Mississippi River at Lansing are being closely scrutinized and no red flags have been found so far.

Of course anyone who took Driver's Ed in the pre-1974 days of Prairie du Chien's suspension bridges across the Mississippi River has their own bridge nightmares, usually related to learning to drive across the narrow, swaying structures. Heaven forbid if a fully loaded semi-truck was coming in the other direction.

Seems to me I got up the nerve to ride my bicycle across the Wisconsin-side span once, which isn't much when you consider that Bob Titlebach and Lonnie Hubbard actually jumped off the bridge into the river. I wonder if Bob still has nightmares about that.

On the internet the two suspension bridges are still up. There are several sites that have nice photos of the structures. One is at: http://www.visi.com/~jweeks/upper_mississippi/pagesA/umissA08.html (Clip link and paste into browser, for some reason the embedded URL was impossible to link correctly). I especially liked the photo showing the causeway that was built between the two bridges, before the trees grew up to shadow over it. That causeway between the two bridges was one of my favorite scenic drives.

Follow-up: Just a couple days later the famous bridge between Prairie du Chien and Marquette gets a mention in the New York Times. It's a travel story about renting a house boat and floating from Lansing to McGregor.