Midwest Guest

Midwest travel links for November 2011

I'm back with my monthly list of Midwest-related stories I read online during the past month:

• A Lincoln Highway Drive-I'm fascinated with the story of the Lincoln Highway. We've managed to travel the length of it through Ohio, along with tiny portions of it in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Indiana. Here's a nice guide to a stretch of the Lincoln Highway through Nebraska at the Nebraska Outback blog.

• ArtPrize Big Dog Artist Speaks About Life in the U.P.-I first became aware of artist Ritch Branstrom when I spotted some of his fish made of scrap metal in a metro Detroit seafood restaurant. His 12-foot-tall dog sculpture was one of my favorite pieces at this year's ArtPrize competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan, so I enjoyed Andrew's profile about Branstrom and life in the Upper Peninsula at ArtServe's Creative Impact Michigan blog.
  
  
• Learning to Appreciate Harley-Davidson-It was fun to see Donna's take on the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I think she looks pretty sporty atop a Harley motorcycle at her My Itchy Travel Feet blog!

 

• 21 Questions with Zamboni Paul-I've always wanted to ride an ice resurfacing machine (a.k.a. Zamboni), so I loved Heather's interview with this long-time Zamboni driver for Indiana's Fort Wayne Komets.

• Louis Bromfield and Loving the Land in Ohio and Visiting a Pioneer of Sustainability-Malabar Farm is on my list of places I need to visit. Meanwhile, I enjoyed Vera Marie Badertscher's stories about Bromfield's experiment in sustainable agriculture, his books and his pretty glamorous connections to 1940s Hollywood at her own Traveler's Library blog and at the Attainable Sustainable blog.

 

• Pitstop at the Peoria RiverFront-Here's a great story about one of Nicole's favorite roadside stops in Peoria, Illinois. Her little Arrow loves this park and the opportunity to take a break during a long road trip. Check it out at Nicole's Arrows Sent Forth blog.

 

• Windy City Whirlwind Tour-I enjoyed David and Veronica's quick tour of Chicago at The Gypsy Nester blog, and it reminded me of how much I enjoyed visiting The Bean and taking the architectural boat tour there.
  
  
• Marina City-Chicago's "Corn Cobs" have to be among the city's most striking buildings, and the authors at the designslinger blog tell us they may be the two most photographed buildings in the city. Check out this story about a unique mixed-used residential development along the Chicago River that, while revolutionary for its time (built in 1959), helped revitalize this urban neighborhood by attracting residents to an area that previously had none.

• Miller Brewery Tour-So the title of this one speaks for itself! Check out Carl from Chicago's recent visit to the free brewery tour in Milwaukee, which includes a couple of great overhead views of the factory's bottling operation.

• Belle Isle Bridge-I've crossed this bridge over the Detroit River many times by car to visit Belle Isle, but I really enjoyed this story from our intrepid two-wheeled adventurer Charlie taking a closer look at the MacArthur Bridge. And here I thought I was the only one who got excited about things like bridge railings! Oh, and check out my story about two smaller bridges at Belle Isle.
  
  
  Belle Isle's Casino Way Bridge
• One woman's quest-stroll every street in Lansing-I learned about Ariniko's to walk every street in the city of Lansing, Michigan, while reading Rick's story at his Panethos blog. Check out Ariniko's own reports of her travels at the City Saunter blog, which includes this recent story (with beautiful pictures) about Lansing's holiday celebrations.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Photo Friday: The nation's shortest covered bridge in Ashtabula, Ohio

Covered bridge fans flocking to Ashtabula County in northeastern Ohio earlier this month for an annual festival celebrating the county's covered spans found something new to celebrate with the official dedication of the nation's shortest covered bridge.

The West Liberty Street Bridge, with its 18-foot span, is the county's 18th covered bridge provides the perfect bookend to a list of county covered bridges that includes the nation's largest covered bridge, the 613-foot-long Smolen-Gulf Covered Bridge.

Former Ashtabula County Engineer John Smolen became an early advocate of replacing crumbling concrete and deteriorating metal bridges with wooden covered bridges, an alternative he said was less costly and more durable than other types of bridge construction. Smolen established his own engineering firm after retiring from the county and continues to design covered bridges like the West Liberty Street span for Ashtabula County.

Students from the Ashtabula County Joint Vocational School took two years to construct the little bridge.

I wrote about this bridge when it was still in the planning stages, so I was thrilled to be able to see it in person and take a few photos when we recently revisited Ashtabula.

The West Liberty Street Bridge features scissors-truss construction. The roof line of a small replica toll booth alongside echoes the roofline of the bridge itself.

The Covered Bridge Festival is over for this year, but you can always take a self-guided tour of the Ashtabula County covered bridges. You can check out my five-part series about the bridges (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5), and plan your road trip with the help of the Delorme Ohio Atlas & Gazetteer.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Historic King bridges at Detroit's Belle Isle

I've wondered about Belle Isle's pretty Central Avenue Bridge and its similarly ornate Casino Way pedestrian bridge.

Central Avenue Bridge

I discovered that these Belle Isle bridges are among of the country's remaining examples of spans built by one of America's most prominent bridge builders during the late 1800s and early 1900s when researching a story about a couple of bridges that caught my eye in Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

The King Bridge Company of Cleveland, Ohio, originally built the 1890s-era Belle Isle bridges and the 1920s-era truss-style bridge I saw in the CVNP that sparked my curiosity. Zenas King founded the company in 1858 and helped move the nation's bridge building from scattered small local craft businesses into a national manufacturing industry by the late 1800s.

Meanwhile, the city of Detroit purchased a 707-acre plot of unimproved land in 1879, hiring famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to plan a park there and oversee improvements at a salary of $7,000 per year. Olmsted created New York's Central Park and some of the country's other most famous parks, and many of his design ideas for creating spacious natural spaces in urban parks are on full display at Belle Isle.

Belle Isle Casino and Casino Way Bridge

Olmsted's layout for Belle Isle included a wide central drive, Central Avenue, and a canal that wanders around the island.

The King Bridge Company was at the peak of its prominence at this time, so it's no surprise that plans for Detroit's large island park included several spans built by the Cleveland company.

The King Bridge Company built the Central Avenue in 1893. Octagonal end posts named Col. H. Kallman as the bridge's original engineer and listed the Commissioners of Detroit's Parks and Boulevards Committee at that time.

Park officials reworked the old beam bridge in 1946-7, taking care to retain the original arched metal fascia, metal railings and concrete posts. The ornate metal worked panels below the span make its arched girder construction appear to be a metal arch bridge.

Retaining some of the original features helped retain the original look of the bridge, but the bridge's historical significance suffers from the extensive reworked and replaced structural parts.

These photos that I took this past spring show the Central Avenue Bridge in need of attention with problems like a missing railing and toppled posts.

Belle Isle's Casino Way pedestrian bridge contains many elements of its original 1893 King Bridge Company construction. The bridge crosses the canal near the island's 1877-built Casino, which is a casino in the classic sense of being a large building used for dances and other social events.  

The Casino Way Bridge's ornate red guard rails, cast iron bronze plaques at the center of the span, and cast iron posts are remnants of the bridge's original construction, but the original structure is long-gone.

Our visit this past spring showed that this bridge also need attention for problems like a badly faded paint job and the broken tops of several of its iron posts.

It's fun to imagine these little Belle Isle bridges in their 1890s glory. It would be even more fun to see them properly cared for and restored to a bit of their former beauty.

Want to learn more about Belle Isle and its history? Check out Detroit's Belle Isle: Island Park Gem by Michael Rodriquez and Thomas Featherstone.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Detroit

Catching a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game

We grabbed the chance to catch a Pirates' baseball game when we recently visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for a family party.

Pittsburgh's PNC ballpark, opened in 2001, has the open design favored by a lot of the newer ballparks, but it makes particularly good use of the city's skyline and its location on the shore of the Allegheny River. Most fans have a great view of the cityscape and the Roberto Clemente (or Sixth Street) Bridge from their seats, plus the two-deck design means the highest seat in the house is just 88 feet from the ball field.

The PNC ballpark is the fifth home of the Pirates since 1887, when they joined the National League. The team has a long and interesting history, which includes playing in the first World Series in 1903 (when they lost to the Boston Americans 5-3), being coached by current Detroit Tigers' coach Jim Leyland from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, and having legendary players like Honus Wagner (who has the distinction of being pictured on one of the world's rarest baseball cards).

We had a great view of the field and Pittsburgh's downtown from our seats along the third baseline, and the seats were amazingly comfortable for being in the middle of the row.

We had a perfect view of Boston Red Sox Kevin Youkilis' crazy batting stance, too. I'm still puzzling over how the pitchers figure out where to throw the ball to him.

I love checking out the crazy promotions and local eats you find at sporting events. Pittsburgh has its bright-green parrot mascot to whip up enthusiasm for the Bucs (one of the team's nicknames derived from "buccaneer"), a between-innings race between four folks dressed as pierogies, and local delicacies like the massive coleslaw- and fries-topped beef sandwich I got from Primanti Brothers concession stand, along with a Yuengling beer to wash it all down.

We got to the ballpark by riding on the "T" (trolley or train) from the suburbs and taking it right downtown.

The city closes the Roberto Clemente Bridge to vehicular traffic on game days, opening it entirely to pedestrians crossing the river and going to the game. Tim tipped his family off to my affection for bridges, so we got off of the T a stop earlier so I could walk across the Smithfield and the Roberto Clemente Bridges on the way to the game (and, yes, there will be Pittsburgh bridge stories here sometime later this year!).

The Pirates took two games of the three-series they played with Boston that weekend, although they lost the game we saw to Boston 2-4.

Still, bridges, baseball, a sandwich nearly as big as my head, and some Yuengling beer made my day at the ballpark with the Pirates a winner.

Curious about the Pirates, Honus Wagner and Roberto Clemente? Check out The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates by Bruce Markusen, Pittsburgh Pirates by David Finoli, or Honus Wagner: On His Life & Baseball edited by William R. Cobb.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Pittsburgh

Cleveland, Ohio, home to King of the nineteenth-century bridge builders

I liked the look of these side-by-side bridges on Hillside Road near the Canal Visitor Center in Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Spotting a framed poster at the center's museum about the bridges' reopening in 2003 sparked my curiosity, and my search for information about them led me to the story of a Cleveland bridge company responsible for building thousands of bridges across the nation during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

I learned that King Bridge Company built the truss-style highway bridge in 1923, likely making it one of the last bridges built by the company originally founded by Zenas King in 1858.

Zenas King worked on his family's farm in upstate New York before moving to Ohio to work as a carpenter and builder. King seemed to have a gift for sales, becoming a clothing merchant and selling iron farm tools. By 1858, King lived in Cincinnati and worked for Thomas Moseley, a bridge builder credited with inventing the first practical tubular arch bridge made from wrought iron.

The then-40-year-old King had no formal engineering or architectural training, but he saw real opportunity in the bridge building industry as the nation's westward expansion demanded a rapidly growing transportation network.

King hired trained civil engineers worked to obtain patents, an important step to becoming a successful bridge builder at the time.  

King moved to Cleveland in 1861, to take advantage of the city's lakeside location and proximity to established transportation routes like the Ohio and Erie Canal. He established an iron works there in 1865.

There were only a few iron bridge builders in the mid-1800s, but King envisioned bridge building moving beyond being a local craft to becoming a national industry.

In 1871, King organized his company, King Iron Bridge & Manufacturing Company, as a stock corporation with $225,000 in capital raised from many well known Cleveland-area business people. He also recruited a nationwide sales staff and formed partnerships with local businesses like foundries and rolling mills.

King's bridge company produced iron arch and swing bridges, but by 1878, the company began building all types of bridges as well as manufacturing other products like iron roof trusses, fencing, and jail cells.

The company built more than 2,700 bridges by the mid-1870s and produced more than 5,000 bridges throughout the United States by 1882, becoming the largest highway bridge works in the nation during that decade.

Zenas King died in 1892, and his son James took over the company.

The King Bridge Company built many of its largest bridges and larger steel frames for structures like shopping arcades, grandstands, office buildings, and factories during James' tenure.

The King Bridge Company faced difficulties in the twentieth century as more than a dozen big bridge companies faced legal problems related to a cooperative arrangement they made with each other to control and share highway bridge projects. The companies, charged for operating as illegal trusts, lost their cases and many of their government contracts.

James struggled with failing health, relinquishing all involvement with the company by 1913. His brother Harry took over the company, which still built several major projects like Cleveland's Detroit-Superior high-level bridge over the Cuyahoga River that connected the east and west sides of that city in 1918.

James died in 1922, and the company folded in autumn of 1923.

The graves of many members of the family are at Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery near the President Garfield Memorial.

Some King Bridge Company bridges are long-gone, like the 1895 swing bridge at Houghton-Hancock in Michigan's Upper Peninsula replaced by a more modern lift bridge in 1959.

Other bridges remain, sometimes extensively rehabbed like roadway and pedestrian bridges at Detroit's Belle Isle (which sounds like another photo-taking field trip opportunity to me!).

The Hillside Road highway bridge, built the year the King Bridge Company folded, is a riveted, nine-panel, Pratt truss bridge spanning the Cuyahoga River in the national park. The 203-foot-long bridge carried an average daily traffic load of 3,234 vehicles in 2000. Cuyahoga County contracted with National Engineering and Contracting to rehabilitate the bridge and build the pedestrian bridge, completing the project in 2003.

Check out Cleveland: 1796-1929 by Thea Gallo Becker for a look at the city when the King Bridge Company flourished there and Zenas King lived along the city's "Millionaire's Row" with other big Cleveland names like John D. Rockefeller.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Hudson

Midwest travel links for March

Check out some of these great Midwest-related stories I read online during this past month:

• Baseball's First Opening Day-Catch this story at Cleveland Area History about the first major league baseball game. Cleveland Ohio's Forest City team and Indiana's Fort Wayne Kekiongas became the first baseball teams to play in a major league game on March 17, 1871, with the Cleveland team falling 2-0 to the Kekiongas at Fort Wayne.

  
  
  Toledo Mud Hens' ball field in Toledo, Ohio
  

• Civic Iconography Done Right: Chicago's City Flag-Aaron writes about Chicago's brilliant use of their flag as an iconic symbol to strengthen the city's visual identity at the Urbanophile blog.  You'll find this readily recognizable civic symbol everywhere in Chicago--flying in front of city and commercial buildings and displayed as a logo on everything from city police cars to tattoos on a local bartender's arm.

• Millennium & Grant Park-I loved reading this story at the designslinger blog about how Chicago's Millennium Park evolved out of an effort to clean up the lake front after Chicago's devastating fire in 1871 and how the original Frederick Law Olmsted plan for a grand park became even grander as famed architects Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett expanded on Olmsted's ideas and incorporated elements of the City Beautiful Movement into its design.

• Gambling? No.-Stop by The Night Train to wish Amy well as she plans her wedding at the beautiful Casino building on Detroit's Belle Isle. Amy tells us that Frederick Law Olmsted, a champion of the City Beautiful Movement, planned most of Belle Isle, although the city rejected his plan for a sheltered promenade. His son later suggested that the casino building include some of the features of the promenade originally suggested by his father.





• Raise a Glass on 313: National Vernors Day-Kath writes about this day dedicated to Detroit's own "deliciously different" soft drink at Great Lakes Gazette. Detroit area ex-pats often go to great lengths to satisfy their craving for Vernors if they can't find it where they live, and I used to carefully pack and ship 12-packs of the pop (yes, it's "pop", not "soda") to my cousin in California until she finally found a local source for Vernors. Ask any Detroiter--if it's not Vernors, it's not real ginger ale.

• The Oldest Ford Plant Still in Operation-I recently saw a presentation a local history conference by a group seeking to preserve portions of the historic Ford plant in Highland Park, Michigan, which pioneered modern mass production with the first continuously moving assembly line in 1913. Ford closed down operations at the Highland Park plant years ago, but check out this story at the Nokohaha blog about a 1924-vintage Ford factory in St. Paul, Minnesota, that now holds the distinction of being the oldest Ford plant still operating.

• Bridges of Madison County (and beyond)-I enjoyed Linda's story about visiting Iowa's famed Bridges of Madison County at Travels with Children. She also includes a few other useful links for finding covered bridges in the Midwest.

  
  
  Pointing the way to covered bridges in Ashtabula, Ohio
  

• Monkey Business in Rockford, Illinois-I always wanted a sock monkey as a kid (in fact, I still do!), but maybe I just need to visit Nelson the world's largest sock monkey in Rockford. Julie writes about her visit with Nelson at the Midway Village Museum and other Rockford attractions at Road Trips for Families.

• Musings on Museums-Amy writes about visiting one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood homes in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, at A Closer Look at Flyover Land. She found the museum there a little disappointing, but advises that fans of Laura's books will find the Ingalls family dugout home site well worth the stop.

• Keeping the Union (and Ohio's Civil War History) Alive-It was all in the family for Kyle Yoho as he grew up the only child of parents who shared their love of historical re-enactments with him. The 21-year-old still travels the country as a member of one of Ohio's most active Civil War re-enactment groups and shares his thoughts with Discovering Ohio's Ashley about why young people continue to enjoy the hobby as we move into celebrations of the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Art Deco gems in Michigan City, Indiana

We visited Michigan City, Indiana, to see the lighthouse and lighthouse museum, but the city's Naval Armory building and bascule bridge with its geometric design details, also drew my attention.

I guessed both structures dated from the 1930s, and my research reveals that both were projects provided jobs for workers during the Great Depression of that decade.

The Michigan City harbor began taking shape as a recreational area during the 1890s when then-mayor Martin H. Krueger led efforts to rehabilitate it and establish Washington Park. A bathhouse, baseball field, dance hall, zoo, amusement park, and skating pavilion provided plenty of amenities for tourists drawn to the Hoosier Slide, a 200-foot-tall sand dune.

Many of the recreational facilities disappeared as the economic difficulties of the 1930s deepened, the Hoosier Slide disappeared because of sand mining, and the Northern Indiana Public Service Company purchased much of the park land.

The Works Projects Administration (later renamed the Works Progress Administration) created some jobs in Michigan City by having workers create stone benches and walkways for Washington Park. The Franklin Street Bridge and the Naval Armory were among the larger WPA construction projects benefitting Michigan City during the 1930s.

The year 1932 marked the bicentennial of President George Washington's birth, and a plaque identifies the Franklin Street Bridge, built that year, as the Washington Bi-Centennial Memorial Bridge.

Many WPA-built bridges featured quintessentially Art Deco design details like the geometric patterns incorporated into the Franklin Street Bridge's railings.

The 182-foot span over Trail Creek is the only historic movable, bascule-style lift bridges in Indiana. Unlike similar plate-girder bascule bridges in neighboring Michigan, it retains its original railings.

The bridge also has its original tender (operator) building at one end of the span, as you can see in my photos.

The nearby white stucco armory building was also a WPA project, featuring many Art Deco, or its Streamlined Moderne variant, style details. Geometric styling, triple entries with large glass windows, and the stark white-with-blue-accents color scheme make it a striking building.

The United States government allocated $25,501 to build the armory as a training center for the United States Naval Reserve, completing it after three years of work in 1939.

Men assigned to the armory right on Lake Michigan considered it "Shangri-La" according to a short video history of the building on the Indiana National Guard site.

Their subsequent assignments weren't always as idyllic.

Members of the 9th Naval Reserves departed from Michigan City aboard the USS Sacramento in August of 1941, bound for the Hawaiian Islands, making them among those stationed at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack that led to the United States' entry into World War II.

The Navy de-activated the armory in 1965, leasing it to the city until 1977, and later to a series of Army National Guard units. An Army National Guard unit currently occupies the building.

In 2007, volunteers cleaning up Trail Creek near the armory found several hundred pounds of World War II-era artillery shells.

The armory served as a gunnery school for the Navy during World War II. Army officials said many of the 160 shells were hollow or had holes drilled into them, so they posed no risk of explosion. They also suggested that the Navy possibly used them for practice rounds that never had any explosive charge to begin with.

The Defense Department recently classified the armory as excess, deciding to get rid of it.

However, Indiana ranks high among states in military recruitment and the department changed course, keeping the armory because of a strong record of recruitment at Michigan City.

The armory also sees other uses like serving as home to an Indiana Department of Natural Resources fisheries office and as a basketball practice venue for area schools.

See Visit the Old Lighthouse Museum at Michigan City, Indiana or Visit the East Pierhead Lighthouse at Michigan City, Indiana for more about our visit to this harbor. I also wrote about a notable WPA project in Michigan, Keweenaw Mountain Lodge: Legacy of hope in hard times, and a unique bascule bridge in Points of interest at Ashtabula, Ohio's Point Park.

Want to learn more? Check out Michigan City Marinas by Jonita Davis or Michigan City by Rose Anna Mueller. The Library of Congress volume, Bridges by Richard L. Cleary, is a sourcebook about the history, engineering, art, and design of American bridges.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Michigan City

Tiny Zehnder's one-dollar bridge and a one-room school in Frankenmuth, Michigan

William "Tiny" Zehnder loved historic bridges. He spent $1.1 million to build an impressive replica covered bridge leading from the town's Main Street to Zehnder's Bavarian Inn resort complex in 1980, so with a price tag of just a dollar, he obviously couldn't pass up a deal to purchase a vintage iron truss span from the Saginaw County Road Commission in 1982.

Of course, Tiny Zehnder invested a few additional dollars to move and restore the Dehmel Road Bridge at his family farm near downtown Frankenmuth.

The Dehmel Road Bridge, or the "Black Bridge" as many residents know it, spanned the Cass River less than a mile west of Frankenmuth. Built in 1907 by the Joliet Bridge and Iron Company of Joliet, Illinois, it replaced a wooden bridge dating from 1883 on Dehmel Road.

The iron, Pratt truss-style bridge was 181 feet long, including a 30-foot pony truss span (with side trusses not connected by cross braces at the top).

In 1982, the county road commission replaced the old iron bridge with a modern concrete span, so Zehnder plunked down his dollar and moved the Black Bridge a couple miles east to his family farm on Townline Road. It remained there for nearly 20 years before moving across the farm to its present site atop new concrete abutments and spanning the shallow Dead Creek at the farm's southern edge.

In 2002, Zehnder had the decking of the now 151-foot-long  bridge (minus the original pony truss portion of the span) refitted with 5 1/2-inch thick Douglas Fir, allowing it to be a working bridge to carry cars, carriages and other vehicles across the creek to the farm.

The Black Bridge still sports its original lattice railings and decorative iron work atop the portal braces at either end.

The Black Bridge is just east of M-83, and Tiny Zehnder restored a similar iron truss bridge nearby, the Beyer Road Bridge. The Beyer Road Bridge includes its pony truss span, but construction on M-83 and traffic back-ups during our visit that made it difficult to get to the Black Bridge made getting to the Beyer Road Bridge pretty much impossible. So, that leaves something new to see next time we're up in Frankenmuth!

Tiny Zehnder died in 2006, but the farm still opens seasonally to visitors with attractions like a petting zoo, horse-drawn wagon tours, and other displays and programs honoring the agricultural history of the area.

The farm wasn't open when we visited, but we were still able to view the bridge and check out a one-room schoolhouse on the property.

Tiny Zehnder moved the Hart school to the farm in 2000. The school, built between 1855 and 1860 east of Frankenmuth at Hart's Corners, served students from first through eighth grades until 1921.

We weren't able to go inside of the school, but we could peer inside the windows and see some of the period furnishings like a cast-iron stove, blackboards, and antique school desks.

Check previous Midwest Guest stories Frankenmuth celebrates its German heritage year round about the town's history or Zehnder's Holz Brücke in Frankenmuth, Michigan, to learn about Tiny Zehnder's wooden covered bridge.

Want to learn more about Frankenmuth's history? Check out Frankenmuth (Images of America) by the Frankenmuth Historical Association.

Love Michigan's bridges? Check out Historic Highway Bridges of Michigan by Charles K. Hyde. The book is a fascinating look at historically significant highway bridges in the state ranging from well known spans like the Mackinac Bridge to lesser known bridges of all construction types. I'm love bridges fan, so I had to buy this book. Plus, I took a couple of classes from Professor Hyde years ago at Wayne State University!

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Frankenmuth

Zehnder's Holz Brücke in Frankenmuth, Michigan

Frankenmuth, Michigan, draws visitors to their massive Bronner's Christmas Store and huge all-you-can-eat chicken dinner restaurants, but these aren't the only larger-than-life attractions in this small Michigan town.

A long covered bridge leading from the town's main street to the Bavarian Inn Lodge and Frankenmuth's festival grounds was the dream of brothers Eddie and Tiny Zehnder, who saw the recreation of a classic 19th century covered bridge as a perfect addition to the Old World-style German village and the Zehnder's Bavarian Inn restaurant/hotel complex.

Eddie first talked about building a covered bridge over the Cass River in the early 1960s. Tiny saw an article about an architect who built or rebuilt covered bridges in the early 1970s, and the brothers began working to make their dream bridge a reality.

They contacted architect and bridge builder Milton Graton of Ashland, New Hampshire, who began working wooden covered bridges in 1954, to create their Holz Brücke (German for "wooden bridge").

The plan called for an impressive two-lane, 239-foot bridge flanked by two covered pedestrian walkways, but the contract was just two handwritten pages that included a simple sketch of a Town lattice-style bridge. Eddie Zehnder considered Graton an artist and said the Zehnders didn't find it unusual that the plans would be mostly in Graton's head, rather than rendered as a complex contract and series of drawings.

Graton enlisted his son and grandson to work on the bridge, a project they started in August of 1978. Milton Graton was 70 years old when he started work on the Zehnders' bridge, but he was a real hands-on architect who still climbed atop his bridge's roof to work (he continued to climb atop his bridges to work until he was 80 years old).

Graton used traditional covered bridge building methods to construct a three-span Town lattice truss bridge with traditional materials. The 230-ton bridge contains 163,288 board feet of wood and only about 1,000 pounds of non-wood material like the nails attaching 25,000 cedar shingles to the structure's roof. Graton used mostly Douglas fir for the trusses, floor joists, rafters, and other areas anticipated as subject to the most wear. He also used other woods like pine, oak, and spruce in the bridge's construction. I even saw many areas where Graton also apparently used wooden pegs rather than nails in the bridge's construction.

Nineteen-century bridge builders built their spans on land and placed the bridges over water after finishing construction. Graton worked the same way, building the Zehnder bridge on the east side of the river and using a team of oxen with a system of equipment like pulleys that allowed the team to pull loads normally requiring as many as 180 oxen. The pull moved at a three-inches-per-minute rate and took 12 days to complete in January of 1980.

The span cost $1.1 million and has an 18-ton working load. Graton told a local newspaper that the bridge could last at least 500 years if properly maintained.

Zehnder's Holz Brücke, dedicated in September of 1980, continues to carry hundreds of thousands of vehicles and pedestrians across the Cass River each year.

Check out my Tuesday story, Frankenmuth celebrates it German heritage year round, or read more about our Frankenmuth experiences in my earlier stories, Frankenmuth's Bavarian Inn serves up chicken, German beer and nostalgia in Michigan, Enjoy a quick respite at Bavarian Inn Lodge, and Bronner's keeps the lights on for Santa in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

I also have a number of other stories about covered bridges in Michigan and elsewhere in the Midwest. You can access these stories by clicking here.

Want to learn more about Frankenmuth's history? Check out Frankenmuth (Images of America) by the Frankenmuth Historical Association.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Frankenmuth

Midwest travel links for November 2010

Check out some of these great Midwest-related stories I read online in this past month:

• Art Deco Landmark: Guardian Building-Kirsten Alana managed to drag in her heavy camera equipment (normally prohibited) and dodge security guards to capture these fantastic images of a real Art Deco gem in Detroit, Michigan. It's very difficult to capture the beauty of the Guardian Building with a hand-held camera, so my own shots never pleased me, but Kirsten's images really do capture much of the colorful grandeur of the classic building.
• Roebling's Last Gleaming-I fell in love with the Roebling Bridge when I first spotted it during a visit to Cincinnati. I became even more fascinated with the span after reading more about it and its link to the Brooklyn Bridge. Needless to say, I totally fell in love with Gordon Bombay's story from the Queen City Discovery blog and his stunning photos from atop the Roebling Bridge.



• Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky-Aaron, the voice behind The Adventures of the elatlboy, takes us on a tour of his favorite stops in this area along the Ohio River in Ohio and Kentucky. Just the mention of stopping at Skyline Chili makes me hungry!
• Halo Burger: Past, Present and Future-Bernard checks out this Flint, Michigan, classic (I love the olive burgers at Halo!) at the Flint Expatriates blog. He chats with the local chain's long-time owner and wonders if new generations of Flint residents will be able to enjoy the beloved burger as a new owner takes over the operation.



• Can I get that with a side of jet engine?-I remember when going to the airport to watch planes take off and land was a cheap date, so I enjoyed this post from Nicole at Arrows Sent Forth about visiting Hanger 5 in Columbus, Indiana, with her son. Mom and son enjoyed lunch while watching planes land and take off from a window by their restaurant booth. Can't think of many places you can do that in these days of heightened security concerns and theater!
• A Prairie Home Celebration-Minnesota photographer Valerie Jardin shares her photos and story about the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul at Travel Between the Pages. The theater, which celebrates its centennial this year, is home to Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" and earned a spot on the National Registry of Historic Places in August of this year.
• 50 Reasons to love Minneapolis/St. Paul-the staff at City Pages put together this eclectic list of Twin City favorites to remind residents of why they love their towns as they hunker down for yet another winter.
• Pikes Peak State Park, McGregor, Iowa-Linda takes us to Pikes Peak at Travels with Children. No, it's not the famous mountain in Colorado. This Pikes Peak in Iowa predates Colorado's Pikes Peak, but both bear the name of explorer Zebulon Pike. He visited the bluff named for him in the Iowa park that overlooks the Mississippi River as he traveled westward.

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