As Old West disappears, so do pieces of history
So when the 92-year-old Dewey Bridge, about 30 miles northeast of town, burned this spring, Irish's neighbors offered condolences.
"Everybody in Moab called me. You'd think I'd lost my lovely wife," said Irish, 79, a lifelong Moab resident who led an effort to refurbish the bridge eight years ago.
The fire, started by a 7-year-old boy playing with matches in April along the shores of the Colorado River, destroyed not only the bridge's wooden white frame but also a significant piece of the region's history.
When it was built in 1916, Dewey Bridge was the second-largest suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, stretching more than 500 feet across the roiling, muddy waters of what was then called the Grand River. It provided a lifeline for southeastern Utah farmers and ranchers trying to get their products to market and a safer alternative to the fledgling ferry service that was "prone to vanishing downriver during periods of high water," according to one history of the bridge.
The bridge was also the last link to the vanished town of Dewey, which today is little more than a scrubby collection of sagebrush, rocks and a few wandering cows.
Despite years of preservation efforts, bits and pieces of Western history are disappearing and, with them, insight about the early days of European settlement. Time and natural decay doom some. Others are sped along in the name of progress, safety or simple neglect.
Many leave a hole, however tiny, in the story of the West.
"The problem is they're nonrenewable resources," said Ron James, Nevada's state historic preservation officer for the past 25 years.
Preservation of historic buildings, bridges and other structures tends to favor the grand, the notable and the notorious. But small farm houses, barns, bridges, windmills and other ordinary items provide important insight into the everyday lives of settlers struggling to survive on the unforgiving landscape of the West, said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private nonprofit group.
"Without them, we get a distorted, romanticized view of the past," Moe said.
In the absence of written records, stories are often left to be discerned from what's left behind.
Bonnie J. Clark, a historical archaeologist at the University of Denver, recalled visiting a wind-swept homestead west of Salt Lake City where a bedspring had been desperately improvised as a fence gate.
"You could tell this was a place where they were doing everything they could to make it," Clark said. "That's the story of the American West for me right there."
Recent comments
How can I donate to the cause rebuilding the bridge?
Friend of the Bridge | June 29, 2008 at 10:28 a.m.
