History repeats itself

It happened the same way it always does. I was in the County Commission Minutes index book at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson, researching a simple question -- when was the Cape Special Road District formed? -- and stumbled into a whole other story that ties in beautifully to some current events. Namely, the 1908 courthouse and the jail are being refurbished at the same time, now, and nearly the same situation was underway in 1908.

What caught my eye was an entry labeled "Concrete arch," and of course I wanted to know more.

The concrete arch was being constructed on the gravel road between Jackson and Burfordville, near the P.H. Holmes place, according to the minutes. Now, my first thought was, obviously this is a decorative arch, a monument, free-standing, that spans a roadway like a skyway. Alas, that was not the case, at all. Likely, this was a bridge, much like the one the late, great James Baughn wrote about in his blog, Pavement Ends, in an entry titled "Cape Girardeau's most obscure historic landmark" -- semissourian.com/blogs/pavementends/entry/33924.

Still, at the time, this would have been revolutionary. At this time in the county's history, special road districts were being formed to improve roadways in the county's townships. (What is now the Cape Special Road District, a network of county roads whose upkeep is paid for via a special tax, was originally the Cape Girardeau Township Special Road District, created in 1913 from districts 17 and 18. Each township, or governable chunk of the county's territory -- Liberty, Shawnee, Apple Creek, Welch, Randol, Byrd, Hubble, Kinder, Whitewater, the aforementioned Cape Girardeau -- had its own road district to help with the road-creating process.) We were going from rutted, muddy, nigh-impassible "roads" to actual pavement in places, and that level of infrastructure didn't come cheap, or easily. Several entries note payments of more than $1,000 each for the roads, which amounts to roughly $31,346 in 2024 dollars. Of course, that's just the dollar amount, and doesn't factor in increased labor costs and material costs.

Back to the concrete arch. The entry about it was near another entry about the county's courthouse -- the old courthouse, a brick structure from the late 1800s, not still standing, next to the 1908 limestone courthouse now under renovation into county offices. First, that courthouse was offered for sale, then a few entries later, it was being razed.

The old jail was also being razed around this same time period -- a two-story building, it stood more or less where Jones Drug Store is today. Incidentally, the Jones Drug Store building was already there at the time.

I just thought it was interesting that the old-old courthouse and the old-old jail were being demolished as the new-old courthouse and the new-old jail were being built in the early 1900s, and today, more than 100 years later, the 1908 courthouse is being converted to county government office spaces at the same time as the jail is being expanded, while a courthouse built in 2019 looks on.

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County Commission minutes online are available at gov.arcasearch.com/usmocpm/

Marybeth Niederkorn is the director of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson. She is a member of various societies devoted to the region's history and is on Jackson's Historic Preservation Commission. Educated at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, she holds degrees in philosophy and professional writing.