Cape Girardeau History and Photos

December 1, 2014November 28, 2020

Cairo’s Railroad Bridge

You can find out more than you ever wanted to know about the railroad industry in general and the Cairo Railroad Bridge in particular at the Bridges & Tunnels website.

By the late 1800s, as many as 500,000 railroad cars a year were ferried across the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Bridging the rivers was hampered by the Civil War, economics, engineering challenges and the steamboat industry, which saw railroads as an attack on its livelihood.

Click on the photo to make it large enough to see Cairo on the right and Kentucky on the left . Just beyond the curve in the background is where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers join at Fort Defiance, the southernmost point in Illinois.

First bridge finished in 1889

The first Cairo Bridge was an engineering marvel. The 10,650-foot, 52-truss bridge was the longest steel bridge in the world at the time. The total length, including trestles was 3.875 miles.

On October 29, 1899, the first train, consisting of nine 75-ton Illinois Central Mogul engines, the heaviest ones in service on the line, inched across the span. After they made it across the Ohio River safely, the train reversed and picked up a tenth engine, and blasted across the bridge at full speed. The second train to cross was full of newspapermen. I’m surprised they weren’t the first test train.

The Ohio River and the railroad bridge are in the foreground. The blue-green bridge in the background is the I-57 bridge crossing the Mississippi River into Missouri.

Bridge needed replacing by mid-1940s

The website reported that a 6.6 earthquake in the New Madrid Sesmic Zone cracked a pier on the bridge in 1895, but repairs were made right away. A 1946 study showed quite a few dangerous deficiencies. Half a century of pounding by heavy loads had worn out key bars and rollers. An anemometer was installed and trains were prohibited from using the bridge when winds were high.

Work on a replacement that used some of the existing piers started in the summer of 1949; it was completed in May 1952.

This photo shows the east side of the bridge and the high levee that protects Cairo from the north.

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November 30, 2014

The Home for Aged Baptist

Mother and I were cruising around looking for the Johnson’s Shut-ins and Elephant Rocks State Parks, when we came around a curve leading into Ironton and saw this magnificent building and grounds. A gatepost marker proclaimed it to be “The Home for Aged Baptist 1935.” Click on the photos to make them larger.

Cypress knees and walkways

Mother said she could remember coming here to visit folks from Advance years ago. The grounds looked like a park with a small waterway, cypress trees, and walkways.

Light on history

I thought it would be easy to find information on the place, but the search was complicated by a name change. It became “The Baptist Home” in 1977.

A Baptist Home newsletter from 2006 said that wealthy businessmen from St. Louis built summer homes in Arcadia Valley in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When one of them, R.L. Lewis, died in 1819, his widow sold the 175-acre estate for $15,000.

Legend has it, the newsletter continues, that Dr. Milford Riggs stood on Sunset Rock atop St. Francois Mountain years earlier and envisioned the exact spot where the Riggs-Scott building was completed in 1923.

Time line

The Baptist Home website lists these key dates in the history of the institution

May 6, 1913: First Home in Ironton opens its doors
1917: Home recognized by state convention
1919: 175 acres purchased for future Home in Arcadia Valley
1923: new Home completed
April 1935: Home is sold on the courthouse steps
June 1935: Home is purchased back “for $1 and other considerations”
1972: Superintendent reports “no indebtedness on any Home property”
1977: Legal name changed to “The Baptist Home”

Rates

A two-room / one bathroom suite is available for $500 a month
A two-bedroom / two-bath chalet would be $850 a month
A two-bedroom / two-bath cabin goes for $1,300 a month
A nursing care room would cost $5,018.75 a month

Fortunately, I’ve not needed to price those services, so I don’t know how they compare with Cape or Florida prices.

November 28, 2014May 3, 2021

Connie Crete Up Close

I’m not exactly sure what this man is doing, and I’m not sure I want to know. It was in the big box of prints and color slides General Sign Company had taken of signs and other stuff it had created from the 40s through at least the 1960s. Terry Hopkins, whose Dad worked there, said he didn’t know who the man was, but it wasn’t his dad. June 1964 was stamped on the cardboard slide mount.

Terry said General Sign made lots of fiberglass figures at the Kingshighway plant, including cows, BIG John, and Shoney’s little guys. I thought this gal looked familiar.

It was Connie Crete

A little deeper in the box was the answer: the girl was Connie Crete, perched high above Cape Ready Mix and down the street from Schneider Equipment Co. at Bloomfield Road and South Kingshighway.

Over the years, the concrete company would be known for the imaginative decorations its concrete trucks would sport. Dad said he bought concrete from Cape Ready Mix because he figured any company that was that creative and kept its trucks so clean probably also turned out a good product.

You can click on the photos to make them larger.

November 27, 2014

You’re Getting a Rerun

I did a post yesterday about a football game played in a concrete stadium built built by the depression-era WPA in Glouster, Ohio, in 1940.

The town of Glouster, where the Glouster Memorial Stadium is located, and Trimble, the home of the Tomcats who play there, are part of an Appalachia that has been dying since the coal mines closed down and the railroads pulled up their tracks: about 25 percent of the roughly 2,500 residents of Glouster and Trimble live below the poverty line. What they DO have is a pride in and a passion for their football team.

Win, but win right

Homemade spirit signs encouraging the Tomcats peppered yards and were displayed by businesses.What I really liked was the way they emphasized sportsmanship, team and town.

Hundreds of towns people tried to keep the field dry with tarps a few days before the big playoff game. When it looked like they might have to move the game off the home field, they brought in a helicopter to blow it dry.

While I was editing the photos, I was listening on the Internet to police calls out of a Missouri community coming apart, while being moved by heartwarming pictures of a community coming together.