How many bridges are there across the Mississippi? Depends on the source you look at - 130? 133? 142? It also depends on how you define a functioning bridge. St. Louis City and County have nine, if I count correctly, two of which are exclusively for railroad use. But there is another one that used to carry historic U.S. Route 66 across the river that is so narrow and worn that it can now only be used for pedestrian sightseeing.
This one is the Alton Bridge, north of St. Louis, from St. Charles County, Missouri, to Alton, Illinois. The eagle in Monday's post was just up and to my left from the place I took this picture.
Quiet, but there are hardly any people to make a sound. There is, however, a nice coffee shop that opens at eight o'clock and has a real Italian espresso machine.
Like so many little American towns, Maeystown's most thriving business is the bar and casual restaurant, Hank and Lillie's Creekside Inn. In a back corner, there are three slot machines, legal in bars in Illinois. The poster on the wall looks like a collage. The stone bridge is a local landmark. Stag beer is a cheap lager that used to be made in our Illinois suburbs, went out of business and then had the name acquired by another company. The gentleman on the right, well, enjoys his hops and barley.
One of the several nice things my colleagues gave me when I retired a couple of months ago was a gift certificate at a charming B&B in the tiny town of Maeystown, Illinois, 45 minutes southeast of our home. The place is called the Corner George Inn, https://www.cornergeorgeinn.com/. The reason is that the town was almost entirely German and there were so many Georges, or Georg, that each one acquired a nickname to distinguish him. Ours happened to live on the corner of the principal intersection (and they don't have many).
The town has not many more than 100 people. Few business survive, as illustrated above. The B&B, a bar/casual restaurant and a few cutsie gift/antique shops are all that remain.
This pic was taken on the same day as the last few posts, some distance north at the old river town of Grafton, Illinois. Long ago there was a booming boat building industry. Times and technology change. The big hit came from the Great Flood of 1993. We flew out of STL at the height of it and it looked like there was a sixth great lake around the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers.
Part of Grafton is along the riverside and part up the bluffs. The low lying parts were inundated while the section on the hills survived. The population went from something over 1,000 to 600. There is no need for a lighthouse on the river. The pushboats' GPS navigation systems are all that's needed. The lighthouse is just a symbol of return.
I wanted to post a picture of an unusual design feature of the Chain of Rocks Bridge but I'm going to have to go back and find a better viewpoint. For now, we have this marker on the eastern side in Illinois. Route 66, made most famous by St. Louisan Chuck Berry, is no longer an official U.S. highway designation. But as the song had it
Well it goes from St Louis, Joplin, Missouri
Oklahoma City looks ooh, so pretty
You'll see Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona don't forget Winona
Kingsman, Barstow, San Bernadino
The original route ran within a moderate walk of my home.. Now it's something to remember and perhaps make a buck off.
This is the Illinois entrance to the old Chain of Rocks Bridge I've discussed lately. Hard to believe that this narrow strip, as part of Route 66, was once the major auto and truck crossing on the central Mississippi. After it went out of business, so to speak, there was talk of demolishing it. The reason it was not razed is that the price of scrap metal was so low it wasn't worth the bother. Now it's managed by the National Park Service and you can walk, run, bike or skate across.
A last post from Alton, Illinois, still in Old Alton Cemetery. I've been in a lot of places like this and never seen so many ruined monuments. What caused this collapse - poor materials or workmanship? A terrible storm or an earthquake? (We have small ones occasionally, with a low but definite risk of a big one.) It's interesting to see how the obelisk cracked in two as it fell.
The posts get much more colorful starting tomorrow.
Something else from Old Alton Cemetery, Elijah Lovejoy's grave and monument. He was a major figure in the early abolitionist movement in this country. Lovejoy was born in Albion, Maine (I think I've been through there), later ending up in St. Louis and Alton as a Presbyterian minister, journalist and newspaper editor. It was in the latter capacity at the Alton Telegraph that his opinion pieces led to his murder at the hands of a pro-slavery mob at the age of 34.
The hazy light wasn't good enough to make the text in the second picture legible. If you would like to learn more about him, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Parish_Lovejoy.
Alton has an Old Cemetery that's worth a visit. It is very hilly (most of the town is) and some of it is in poor condition. We were looking for the grave and monument of Elijah Lovejoy (more about which later) and came across this. The stones are hardly bigger than my shoe. The scene looked sorrowful and dejected.
It has been said that I have loose associations (something I'm happy about). The loudspeaker in my head immediately began to play one of the great moments in Western music, O Mio Babbino Caro (O My Dear Daddy) from Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (https://youtu.be/uFLVKaFVGag). Mamma doesn't get nearly enough credit.
Another statue of a native of Alton, Illinois, Miles Davis. One of the giants of jazz came from this bit of a backwater, although he didn't stay long. It's a wonderful statue, showing him with his spine arched backward, so often his posture in intense passages.
The caption comes from an early album of the same name (an example at https://youtu.be/KcoqwKEtYDs). I became acquainted with Davis when his style turned to jazz-rock fusion in the powerful Jack Johnson of 1971, https://youtu.be/DEBKksupBVA. A glance at the album cover on Youtube will show you where the statue's posture came from.
Another gee whiz fact about Alton, Illinois. It was the birthplace of Robert Wadlow, who, according to Wikipedia, was the tallest person in recorded history for whom there is irrefutable evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wadlow . He grew to 8 feet, 11 inches or 2.72 meters. His height was due to a pituitary disorder which caused an excess of human growth hormone. He lived only 22 years, succumbing to infection from a defect in a leg brace.
Brussels, Illinois, is home to 188 souls according to the sign at the edge of town. There is a finger of southwest Illinois stranded between the Illinois and Missouri rivers with little access to either side except for small ferries. The rich farmland in between is isolated, rolling countryside with a couple of tiny towns.
The Great River Road runs under the bluffs up the east shore of the two rivers. At a quiet spot we found the Brussels ferry, a flat deck that holds about 15 cars. It is a free service of the State of Illinois, going back and forth on demand 24 hours a day. It took us to this bucolic nowhere.
The land from St. Louis to Alton on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River is very flat. It would be flooded often were it not for the large levees. However, from Alton upstream along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers there are tall limestone bluffs overlooking the waters.
The first one rises abruptly on the western edge of town. There you will find an imaginative painting of the legendary, monstrous Piasa (PIE a saw) bird. There are several versions of the story. Look at http://www.altonweb.com/history/piasabird/ if interested. The photos on the link are old, with much brighter colors.
