First bridge blast draws large crowd

Explosives sent a section of the old Mississippi River bridge at Cape Girardeau crashing onto the tree-filled Illinois shore Tuesday as hundreds of spectators looked on from the Missouri shore trying to glimpse a piece of history.

The blast brought down three piers and the metal spans -- about 1,250 feet in length -- that sat on those piers in a matter of seconds.

It was the first of eight blasts that will occur over the next five months to remove the 76-year-old span. The next is tentatively scheduled to be set off in a couple of weeks, said Missouri Department of Transportation engineer Stan Johnson.

Some spectators showed up at the Cape Girardeau riverfront more than an hour before the blast. Many of the spectators brought video and still cameras to record the event.

"We just had to be here for this," said Doris Livesay of Jonesboro, Ill. "This is history."

Doris' husband, Robert, was 5 years old when the bridge was dedicated on Sept. 3, 1928. He and his wife have crossed the span many times. They remember when it was a toll bridge and a one-way trip cost 50 cents.

"It served its purpose," Robert Livesay said as he waited for the bridge's demise.

The explosion happened so quickly that by the time spectators heard the blast the steel span had already dropped.

"There was no warning," Doris Livesay said. "It was just gone."

Still, she said the blast was worth the wait. "It really was exciting."

The blast occurred about 12:10 p.m., 10 minutes later than planned. MoDOT's Johnson said the delay was prompted by a northbound tow on the river. The pilot of the towboat agreed to wait until after the blast to resume pushing barges, he said.

The bridge is being razed at a cost of $2.23 million. Midwest Foundation Corp. of Tremont, Ill., is the general contractor. Demtech, a subcontractor from Dubois, Wyo., handled the explosive work.

'Not the spectacular one'

Johnson said other blasts will be more dramatic. "This one was really not the spectacular one," he said.

But spectators loved it just the same.

Gene Edwards of rural Thebes, Ill., stood next to a concrete railing at Riverfront Park intent on snapping a photo of the blast.

"I paid a lot of tolls on that bridge," said Edwards, who has crossed the span thousands of times. Cape Girardeau celebrated the "freeing" of the bridge on June 29, 1957, ending a system of tolls that had been in place since the span opened in 1928.

The new Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge opened just south of the old bridge last December, putting an end to the use of the old span.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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