REMEMBER...PROGRESS EDITION TO STIR MEMORIES

There's the Cape Girardeau those of us who live here know: the one with a new bridge over the horizon, a city swelling at the western and northern edges, its government reluctantly preparing to revert to ward politics; a city where the college basketball team wins and the fight against drugs continues.

There's also the singular Cape Girardeau that exists in each of our memories. And yet another one in our collective imagining of what could be seen, heard and smelled on a walk through town a century or two ago.

The 1874 Cape Girardeau had three flour mills, two cigar-manufacturing shops, 11 blacksmiths, seven wagonmakers, a barrelmaker, three livery stables and a distillery.

"Progress: Then and Now" embodies all those Cape Girardeaus. The Southeast Missourian's 56th Progress Edition will be published with Thursday's edition. The newsstand rate for this edition is $1.25.

In more than 65 stories and a legion of photographs, the edition ranges across the agricultural, business, educational, health, governmental and civic life of the community to explore what it is and was to live here.

Two men named Louis founder Lorimier and railroad developer Houck had a lot to do with it, of course, but their industriousness was spread around.

By the turn of the century, nine saloons, 10 grocery stores and eight mercantiles were doing business between Water Street and the 700 block of Broadway. Main and Good Hope streets had almost as many.

Cape Girardeau's first fire department, while a bit primitive in technique, came with the reassuring name of the Good Intent Fire Company.

The bell at the Presbyterian church was the alarm. The number of times the church bell was tapped indicated which ward the fire was in.

The city's first jail, built in 1856 and located north of the fountain in Courthouse Park, was called The Calaboose. A dungeon and whipping post were handy nearby.

In its earlier days, the city had two premier hotels the St. Charles and the Riverview on Main Street. The former held elegant balls to entertain the city's young people.

As the city grew, transportation became more important. The city's residents rode trolleys from 1893 until 1934.

"On Halloween we would soap the tracks on Broadway hill and watch the wheels sit and grind," remembers longtime resident Bob Koeppel.

One of Cape Girardeau's early aviators used the Mississippi River for a runway.

Today, we may take the Mississippi River Bridge for granted and welcome the proposal to replace it. But replacing the sometimes hairy ferry rides with the original bridge was a community project whose dedication was rejoiced by many thousands.

We take notice that a religious leader evangelist Billy Sunday spoke to 250,000 people in Cape Girardeau over a five-week stay in 1926, while the incipient king of rock 'n' roll Elvis himself sang to 300 at a dance at the Arena Building in 1955.

Our view of progress includes a reverence for longevity for Judith Ann Crow's house at 323 Themis St., which probably dates to 1821; for Cape Girardeau's oldest retail business, which began by installing windshields in Model T's; and for a 75-year-old pediatrician who's still practicing.

It also pays tribute to innovations.

In 1955, Cape Girardeau became the second city, and the first large city, in the state to introduce fluoride into the drinking water.

"Only one small community in the Ozarks was ahead of us," says Dr. Dan Cotner, who has been a dentist in Cape Girardeau for 44 years. "We were really pioneers in fluoridation."

The edition examines how much athletics and athletes have changed.

"When I played, the only sports were football and basketball," said legendary Cape Central baseball coach Leon Brinkopf.

"Now, I've been told, you can letter in 17 sports at Central High School, including the girls sports."

Cape Girardeau has been home to some outstanding and idiosyncratic individuals. Among them, Sadie Tresevant Kent, who ruled over the library that would one day bear her name.

"Some remember her as an overbearing Army general who acted as if every book and every piece of furniture in the library were like rare jewels to be guarded with her life," wrote retired Southeast English professor H.O. Grauel.

The other communities in the region are not neglected. We learn that Jackson was one of the largest towns in the state in 1820. But things change.

"Until 1817, when the first steamboat landed here, Cape Girardeau was nothing more than a small, isolated village that was only accessible with great difficulty to St. Louis," Bob White of the Center for Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University says.

And the edition tells how the Union-supporting residents of New Hamburg earned the enmity of Confederate bushwhackers during the Civil War.

One rebel commander wrote: "To the bottom of my heart I cursed the man who first invented war; but as war on one side and mercy on the other would only lead to death, we marched our `Dutchman' off about a mile and hung him to a leaning tree."

And government of course gets its due, from the recent vote to revert back to the ward politics that existed when Cape Girardeau was incorporated, to the metamorphosis of the prosecuting attorney's office.

Once mostly a training ground for young lawyers, the office's four attorneys now handle 1,500 cases and earn substantial salaries along with retirement and medical benefits.

"Back then the only benefit we had was an invitation to (former Cape County Sheriff) Ivan McLain's annual fish fry and parking privileges at the county fair," said Circuit Judge William Syler.