When old Dewey Bridge was burned to death in April by
a 7-year-old playing with matches, it was almost more bad news than
I could bear to hear. One relic after another of the rural West’s
past has vanished, but this was one I thought would survive. The
bridge was originally brought in pieces from Chicago in 1916, and
assembled across the Colorado River, 30 miles upstream from Moab,
Utah; for a while, it was one of the longest suspension bridges
west of the Mississippi. A few years ago, Jennifer Speers, the
millionaire with a soul, bought up the adjacent Dewey Bridge
subdivision from a developer. She plowed under the roads,
dismantled the infrastructure and tore down a $600,000 home in
order to restore the area to the way it had been.
It was
a rare place of Hope. Now this. The fire triggered memories of my
first visit to Dewey, more than 30 years ago.
I first
heard about Dewey Bridge, believe it or not, from my mother. In
1973, I was still living in Kentucky, trying to scrape together
enough money to come West again, if only for a month or so. The
previous winter, I’d passed through Moab for the first time, on one
of the coldest days in recorded history. I stopped only long enough
to gas up and then drove all the way to Grand Junction, where I
used my dad’s Gulf Oil credit card for a warm bed at the Holiday
Inn.
But I’d seen enough of this country to plan a return
visit. The next summer, my parents went west themselves and told me
about a dusty, unpaved, corrugated “highway,” designated Utah State
Route 128. And they told me of a narrow old one-lane suspension
bridge that I needed to see.
Weeks later, my dog Muckluk
and I came West ourselves. We found the old road and passed through
Cisco, which was rapidly approaching ghost town status even then.
There was one cafe still open, “Ethel’s,” which I later learned did
double-duty as a brothel of sorts for lonely prospectors.
But I didn’t stop. Soon, I spotted a gravel and dirt road, Utah
128, and turned left toward the river. I saw no one. Not a car or
motorhome. No trucks or RVs. No ATVs. Nothing.
We came to
the river, my dog and I, and I figured the bridge was just ahead,
but it was late afternoon, so I pulled into a stand of cottonwoods
to make a camp. I pitched my cheap little blue nylon tent, fed
Muck, cooked some beans on my Coleman stove and walked over to the
Colorado to eat. The river was low, but the current was swift. I
saw a great blue heron, heard the canyon wren for the first time.
And I could hear the rustle of the leaves in the great cottonwoods
above me.
Finally, as the canyon filled with shadows, I
heard the whine of a motor, coming down the grade from Cisco. It
was a pickup truck, a local rancher, I guessed. He saw me and waved
and kept going. I could hear his truck for a few minutes and then
the silence returned. That night was one of the happiest of my
life. An evening of “quiet exultation,” as someone once said.
The next morning, I found the
bridge. We stopped for a while, and Muckluk, that damn dog, jumped
in the river for a swim so she could later smell up the upholstery
on my car. It was a glorious morning.
I knew it would be
the first of many visits to Dewey Bridge. It never occurred to me
that any part of this place would change or disappear.
But in 1974, much of the gravel and dirt road from Cisco to Moab
was paved, although the asphalt was rough and pitted, and the
“improvements” were negligible. Even better, because Dewey Bridge
was only one lane wide — barely eight feet — large vehicles could
not get across it. It was one kind of discrimination I could live
with and even applaud. For another decade the road from Moab to
Cisco remained quiet.
In 1985, however, the Utah
Department of Transportation began construction on a new bridge,
just down river from the old one. And a year later, when it opened,
traffic on Highway 128 increased dramatically. Further
“improvements” have brought still more cars and motorhomes and
trucks. Sometimes it is downright congested. Still, it’s a
beautiful drive and those discovering it for the first time will be
awestruck. But they’ll never be able to understand just what it
felt like on that summer night in 1973. I’m not even sure they’d
care to.
I recently stopped at the old bridge site for
the first time since the fire. I could still smell the ash. The
parking lot adjacent to it is now a staging area for mountain
bicyclists and on this day, about a hundred brightly clad
participants were prepping themselves and their bikes for a ride
over the Kokopelli Trail. I felt peculiarly out of place in my
Wranglers and Redwings — as much of an anachronism as the old
bridge once was. I walked to the south abutment. The fire had
burned every sliver of wood; all that remains are the cables. I
stood there for several minutes, almost paralyzed by the sight.
One of the bikers walked up to me and said, “Hey, I hear
they might rebuild it … It’ll be just like it was before.” I
looked at him, smiled, and went back to my car.
Jim Stiles has published The Canyon Country Zephyr in
Moab, Utah, since 1989. He is also the author of Brave New West:
Morphing Moab at the Speed of Greed.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Dewey Bridge: In memoriam.
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