Concrete history

The old Mississippi River bridge at Cape Girardeau has disappeared over the past few months in deafening and dramatic explosions that sent huge steel spans crashing into the current. The underwater detonations that more recently are eliminating the concrete piers have made much less of an aural and visual display, but they are the final strokes toward erasing the old bridge from the landscape almost entirely and bringing the grandeur of the new Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge more into view.

Originally, the plan was to save only the two terra-cotta cartouches -- decorative scrolls -- on the entrance archway on the Missouri side of the old bridge. Now the Cape Girardeau City Council has decided to save the entire concrete entrance archway at an estimated cost of $97,000. The city hopes to find some private funding for the preservation project and may use some Convention and Visitors Bureau funds.

The archway could serve as an unofficial entryway to Terrace Park, an open-roof pavilion and winding trail through the east side of the River Campus planned nearby by Southeast Missouri State University. The archway would be only a matter of feet from the park's trail.

Cape Girardeau, Jackson and Scott City are becoming more aware of the value of historic preservation. Witness the Marquette Tower renovation in Cape Girardeau and recent moves to create historic districts in the region's two other largest cities. For 76 years, the old bridge served us well. Now it is part of our history. Preserving a piece of that history will serve as some reminder of where we came from.