To set the scene for today's Old News, think about old bridges. Specifically, think about old bridges in Pulaski County.
Where today's concrete Main Street structure spans the Arkansas River like a warped barbecue fork, other bridges once stretched from Little Rock to North Little Rock (aka Argenta). From 1924 to 1973, citizens traveled over a grand concrete item with seven open-spandrel arches. Fancy.
And before that, from 1897 to 1923, Little Rockians crossed into Argenta using a wooden-floored platform supported by willowy steel trusses pinned atop concrete piers. Five-foot pedestrian walkways flanked its traffic lane, which was 24 feet wide -- enough for three teams of horses to pass abreast.
It was "the free bridge" because it didn't charge a toll.
The Baring Cross Bridge also connected the two shores, but it was a railroad bridge with a highway deck tacked on, and the public paid to cross. It was, as a letter to the editors of the Arkansas Gazette put it July 4, 1897, "an extortionary pay bridge" by means of which thousands of dollars had been "pressed from the hands of honest toil to be placed into the coffers of the railroad kings."
Pulaski County opened the free bridge July 5, 1897, and Little Rock folded in to its Fourth of July pomp a bridge-opening blowout attended by an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 people. Those estimates are found on different pages in the Gazette's enthusiastic summary, published the next day.
The prose of the 1897 Gazette shocks my little journalistic heart. Of course, the free bridge was quite the deal. But the editors -- J.N. Smithee, president and manager; Robert A. Little, vice president; Fred W. Allsopp, secretary and assistant manager -- embraced a dream of jubilation so universal that only the most adulatory blather would do to describe the scene.
For starters, smack in the middle of Page One sat a three-column box summing up the contents:
THE EAGLE SCREAMS IN LITTLE ROCK
The celebration of the Glorious Fourth of July.
Rejoicing Over the Completion of Free Bridge.
Emancipation From Monopoly Rule in Little Rock.
MANY THOUSANDS ATTEND THE GREAT CELEBRATION
Magnificent Reception of the Multitude of Visitors by Citizens.
The City Beautifully and Elaborately Decorated for the Event.
The Nation's Birthday Appropriately Remembered by Everybody.
A MAGNIFICENT PARADE THAT WOULD DO HONOR TO ANY CITY IN THE LAND
Those are just the headlines. I suppose the tone is in keeping with the column of paid ads running down the left-hand side of Page One, but let's nibble a few sentences off the long, long main story. It floods over five pages of the eight-page paper with column after padded column of unstintingly superlative fanny-kissing:
"The stranger was welcome, and he was accorded every courtesy. He was given every opportunity to see everything that was worth seeing. ... Little Rock was the host and it took excellent care of its thousands of guests. ...
"Little Rock has had celebrations innumerable, has had crowds, congregations, gatherings, conventions, conferences and drills, but never before such a multitude of people as met and mingled with us yesterday to commemorate and be glad with us, to join with us in an exhibition of pride on the completion of our great free bridge, and to combine with us in a loud and long huzzah as the eagle screamed in observance of the nation's birthday. ..."
"By Saturday night we had a thousand strangers within our gates; by Sunday night 3,500; before noon yesterday the attendance, at a conservative estimate, was upwards of 10,000."
Golly, that's a lot. Where did they all sleep?
"In the hotels and boarding houses the guests were packed like sardines. They could not and did not complain of their accommodations."
The paper recorded a bounty of speechifying by worthies, starting with a "well known and eloquent divine," the Rev. John Gass, rector of Christ Church. He offered a "touching and appropriate" invocation, which the paper quoted verbatim. And then came the windbags.
Unless the speakers handed over transcripts, those poor reporters must have tucked into bed with hand cramps.
Representative sample: Former Mayor Col. W.G. Whipple shouted that "eight years ago Pulaski County, in the person of Judge Wilbur F. Hill, decreed that the waters of the Arkansas, always forbidding and treacherous, often times swollen, threatening and destructive, should no longer obstruct the business and social intercourse of the peoples residing in the two cities of the county, and that henceforth, except for purposes of navigation, water supply and drainage and similar purposes, the Arkansas river should cease to exist. Witness today the execution of the decree! Behold!"
Whipple reviewed the winding route the project took through political and commercial opposition, including attempts to build the bridge at Broadway and an even more "unnatural scheme" at Collins Street. Then he declared:
"And now the bridge is here and it is come to stay. And each recurring day, when the morning light shall gild it, and when parting day shall tinge it with its gorgeous beams, under the glorious electric light or under the silver moon and golden stars, it will be a source of pride to us and a joy forever."
That was not the end of his speech, by the way.
The Gazette also reported ballgames, a shooting contest, a balloon ascension featuring a fascinatingly pale-complected female daredevil, men and ladies on bicycles, fireworks that were shot off the bridge, and a parade that stretched for miles with floats so fabulous they were too fabulous to cross the bridge. The report even included an interview with an engineer. He said the bridge was quite the bargain at $377,000.
The heat was intense, but of course no cases of prostration were reported. No "Falls to Death From Free Bridge" quite yet. Nothing untoward was witnessed in the crowd that was "wild to celebrate."
Unless you count the "Awful Calamity" reported after the screaming eagle report wrapped up on Page 6: Four young people drowned when their skiff went under a barge while they were viewing the fireworks.
Also, a man drowned while bathing near Baring Cross Bridge.
And on Page 8, a valuable "blooded mare" was spooked in the street, plunged through a plate glass window on Main Street and had to be destroyed. A man seated inside the store suffered a gash on his head from the flying glass. But he wasn't expected to die.
Next week: "Turned Somersault in Falling."
ActiveStyle on 07/04/2016