- This is a production of SDPD.

- They wanted it to be something that would make Yankton even better than it was.

It was very personal.

- Well, the obvious thing is the ability to cross the water conveniently.

But I think now for I, I guess we'd have to call it entertainment, walking the bridge is every day it's in used by people.

- I get to be immersed in our history by walking that bridge.

It's a symbol of the strength of community.

- This structure and its look is just unique to Yankton and just a beautiful place to come with your family.

- There's a connection to it, even though most of the people using it today weren't alive when it was constructed.

So maybe it's just legendary that just keeps reinventing itself each year.

I don't know.

But it certainly is be loved by the community, - Dakota Life Detours has made possible with your membership in the Friends of SDPB.

Thank you.

With help from Visit Yankton, south Dakota's historic year-round destination for adventure visitors never run out of things to do outdoor and indoor recreation, historic South Dakota landmarks, and a welcoming community that makes Yankton a wonder for all seasons.

And by Lewis and Clark Resort on the Missouri River in Yankton, a relaxed getaway with cabins, motel rooms, and camping and lodges for large groups like corporate retreats and weddings.

A place to stay and play while visiting historic Yankton - Donors to the Explore South Dakota Fund support the production of local documentaries and other programs of local interest presented by SDPB.

Friends of STPB appreciates their support of this program.

- The Meridian Bridge has watched over Yankton for 100 years.

It's a testament to the early 20th century engineering with the vertical lift design and also the can-do spirit of the Midwest, the Meridian Bridge, connected commerce and community as its span.

An unpredictable Missouri River before the bridge crossing from Nebraska to South Dakota and proved a challenge.

- The demand for crossing wasn't 24 hours a day, so you had to wait until Ferry was on a schedule that would coincide with your need.

- And the river just did not always cooperate.

You know, that's just the way it is.

It's there.

There are many stories of the ferry taking off on one side and ending up several miles down the river on a, you know, hung up on an island somewhere because the, the Missouri River is notoriously interesting.

How about that?

Yeah, fickle crazy.

It just, the muddy mo, - Well, winter crossings of course depended on safe, thick ice so they could drive, walk, use horses, whatever, to get went from Nebraska into South Dakota.

The pontoon bridge was treacherous in itself, but it was kind of an interesting invention, I guess.

I don't know if there were such bridges in other locations or not, but this one was really interesting construction.

And I think there were people afraid to use it, but sometimes too.

But it was a method.

And so they did, - There wasn't a clear path for construction of the bridge and it was often met with obstacles.

It took 30 years of planning and pitfalls before it was built.

- There was several companies who showed up and there was actually multiple times where there were materials bought sitting on the river edge, and then all of a sudden something falls through and they disappear.

And I believe even one contractor suddenly died unexpectedly after eating bad lobster or something like that, you know?

So it was one of those things where you can't make it up.

You had already had the establishment of the Meridian Road and that went from Canada down to Mexico.

They called it the Main street of America.

And Yankton knew that they were a very important piece in that because it was going to promote that commerce and all that traffic that was gonna come through.

And, and really the funding that was coming through for the Meridian Road was bottlenecking in Yankton because a wooden Thunder River crossing - The whole process, which became this bridge, it was a group of people who were meeting one Sunday night for supper in June of 1919.

Somebody said, you know, what do we need in Yankton?

What do we need in Yankton?

And, and they all said, we need a bridge.

I'm sure they laughed.

And except there were a couple of guys that went home that night.

And the next morning they decided to do something about by, by the end of the afternoon, by the end of that evening, they had literally drawn up a sort of contract almost, and they'd gone around and had other people sign it, who were willing to give X amount of dollars to make this happen.

And so DB Gurney came into it because he was, I think he was the president of the Chamber at that point.

- DB Gurney became the president of the Meridian Bridge Company and led the charge on fundraising and the overall construction of the bridge.

Some say he took on the role for personal reasons.

His wife, Henrietta Clapping Gurney was often working alongside in the efforts to get the bridge built.

It all stems from one specific river crossing.

Neither would ever forget, - Henrietta was getting ready for her wedding in the 1890s to DB Gurney.

And so she was taking her horse and carriage across the Missouri.

It had been frozen over, so she was riding it across to the family farm.

I believe she was collecting some items and things that she wanted for the ceremony.

So she had stayed overnight at the family farm.

It was unseasonably warm over overnight.

So she came back to cross again and she was a little apprehensive 'cause she was like, you know, it got really warm and she was a little concerned, but then somebody who had just crossed said, you know what?

People have been crossing all day.

You know, you're fine.

No big deal.

So she ventured out onto the ice.

She was still a decent distance away from the South Dakota side, and the water was to the hub of her wheels.

And then it was creeping up and up and then it was going over her feet at the bottom of her carriage.

And she said, at that moment, I just let go of the reins, close my eyes and held on tight.

And she said her horse took this giant leap and all of a sudden she said, I opened my eyes and I was on dry land.

And so she was incredibly grateful.

And of course, you know that that near tragic moment, that motivated DB Gurney to really take charge of that Meridian Bridge project.

- So stories about how she was concerned about people in Nebraska, for example, not being able to get to the hospital, hospital once it was being built.

And I think you're right, absolutely.

It's because she grew up in Northeastern Nebraska looking at Yankton and not being able to get here regularly - With a bridge company in place.

And Mr. And Mrs. DB Gurney leading the charge, the project needed to raise $1.1 million.

They did this through grassroots efforts in the communities that needed access to America's Main Street Yankton.

- They literally went door to door in Yankton, then they went door to door in Ville, in Mission Hill, in in, in towns that don't even exist anymore, there's a list of the banks that participated at one point and, and some of those communities we've barely heard of.

Now they went into Nebraska, they went farm to farm in South Dakota, Nebraska.

And they went and said, how much stock can you buy?

And of course not everyone did, but many, many, many people did obviously, or would never have happened - Once the funding was in place.

Construction began in the fall of 1920, just a year after the Meridian Highway Bridge Company was formed.

- The bridge ended up being eight pierce all the way across 3029 feet from the South Dakota approach to the Nebraska approach took 11,000 barrels of concrete.

So they poured those 11,000 barrels and they were powder when they showed up, they mixed it on site and, and then they poured it in.

So 3,500 tons of steel when they were all said and done.

There's 750,000 rivets, steel rivets.

And if you don't know what rivets are, you know it's hot, you know, steel, and then you heat it up and you need to pound it in and to hold something together.

That's an older construction, but 750,000 rivets.

The lift span I think is really cool.

It's 824 tons.

And it was so well balanced with its counterweights that it only took a 20 horsepower engine to lift it.

And I believe it would go about 27 feet in the air is what they expected.

I think the other really neat thing about the lifespan is that the engineers knew that the Missouri River was completely unpredictable.

It changed its channel whenever it felt like changing its channel.

And so they wanted to make sure that the Meridian Bridge was very versatile for the Missouri, so was built specifically for this river.

So that lift span could get removed and put into any other section of the bridge.

So you could take that part out and switch it out with another part.

If the TRA channel happened to change.

- Building bridge Piers were a dangerous specialty and required workers called sand hogs.

- They were mostly not local because these were people who had to know what the heck they were doing because they were going to be under the surface of the water and indeed under the bed of the river and down there with the only air source was piped into them from above.

And then they'd be down there, not just digging out to make a way for the piers to be set way below the bed of the river.

They were actually exploding things down there in this, in this wooden box that had just an air thing, a little hose into it to give them something to breathe.

And so this was not for the faint of heart.

It was quite the thing, especially when there was ice or when river was really churned up.

It was, it was - Extremely dangerous.

Construction was completed in 44 months and the total cost was $1.3 million.

Not one life was lost during construction.

The Meridian Highway Bridge opened to the public on October 11th, 1924.

The celebration lasted eight days.

The official program called it the Celebration Supreme Event of a lifetime - Fall full days.

Each one with different emphasis full doesn't even begin to describe it.

There were, you know, specific dedication events and that kind of thing.

Humongous entertainment area in the northern part of the, I mean, it was vaudeville.

It was, it was style shows, it was circus, it was rodeo, it was, anything you can think of was going on then.

And people were there.

That's where the tent city was.

A thousand tents they put up.

And that's where people stayed.

Many people stayed 'cause there weren't hotel rooms.

Enough people opened their homes.

And you said the participation private homes were used for these people to stay in.

And they came in the tens of hundreds of thousands from all over, from Omaha.

They, they chartered a special train, a thousand people on the train.

Thousands of cars from Omaha alone, huge parades.

They hired a professional float makers from I, it was Illinois or something.

And they built these special floats and, and then all the people in their cars would take part in the parades.

It was just, it's just stunning.

- With the dedication complete, the bridge began its work as the silent partner in commerce between Nebraska and South Dakota.

And all along the length of the Meridian Highway from Canada to Mexico, the bonds borrowed needed to be paid back to the region citizens that gave money to make the bridge a reality.

- Well, they had to pay back the money that they had borrowed, I guess we'll say, from the citizenry.

And they did it faithfully and successfully.

So I guess we'd call that a victory, even though it went until 1953 when it was finally accomplished.

- The bridge was eventually sold to the city of Yankton and the Meridian Highway Bridge Company was dissolved.

The city of Yankton knew in order to give control of the bridge to the states of Nebraska and South Dakota, the bridge would need to be debt-free, free in 53 had a ring to it and was an achievable goal.

Marli Thompson list was at the 1953 celebration.

- My mom won the doll at a bridge celebration.

And in the Christmas of 1938, it would be then I was three years old and I received this doll in the buggy with a wardrobe mom had made.

And I know one time her name was Jane.

And then some years, few down the road, she had a, this doll had, was pretty uptown.

She had a wig and a new wardrobe.

And my dad had made a cradle and I got this doll for Christmas and I gave her a new name and I think maybe a third time I got her for Christmas.

And I've had her all these years.

I had no sisters, so I didn't have to share my doll with anybody.

And I was pretty careful with her.

And then in 1953, I had just gotten outta high school and I, from Irene and I went to work for John Walsh and Jim Getz Walsh and gets attorneys.

And the bridge was free in 53.

Yep.

Well, our law office was at third and Walnut in very top of that building that is still there on the northwest corner.

And I signed up for prizes and wonder of Wonders.

My name was drawn for a girl's bicycle.

I was 18 years old and had never owned a bicycle in my life.

And here I was with a bicycle.

- Once the bridge was paid off, it became state property.

One of the bridge operators was Don List.

He recalls the regular maintenance it took to keep it running.

- That little engine sitting under there with all the spills with the cable, well the cables come out.

So we had a, a manmade scaffold that hang over the rail and these cables were in front of us.

And our job was with the screwdriver, steel brush, the old bureau opener.

You remember to go in that cruise and clean the clay to roll out.

You clean that hay and, and straw and dirt and pitch.

So we clean all that out, which was a slow process.

And then we put new crater hole in it that would preserve it.

So we had a move that sask on the outside of the railing, clear up, up, cleaned to the next tower - After the cables that ran the length of the bridge between the two towers were cleaned and new grease was applied.

It was time to clean the giant cables that ran up the tower to the counterweights.

- Then we start the big cables about like that.

Then we started cleaning the grooves on them.

Big cables and the concrete boxes right here.

Wow.

And so then we, what we'd do, we would move the scaffolding all up and clean as we clean as we went.

And then when we finally got to the top, there were shields over these big cables.

Well, we cleaned up as far as we could reach up there.

And then that was it.

- Dawn and Marlis are longtime residents of Yankton.

And like a lot of folks, the bridge has been an integral part of their lives.

Gary Becker grew up next to the bridge and played as a boy under its shadow.

- There was a little backwash in there, it was incredible fishing in there.

So that's, it's all we always been.

And it was nice thing about it, you know, 90, a hundred degree day, well he was in the shade underneath the bridge Street sweeper.

You'd always for years dumped down there, you know, because it was this dirt and stuff.

So they just filled that area and then it got slowly, slowly got less and less a fishing area for us.

But we always went to another spot.

But so we, we always, we get help from school and the first thing we do is run and get our fishing poles and then go fishing for a while and stuff.

So - There are no shortages of family stories surrounding the bridge at Yankton, Gary's family fondly recalls how welcoming the bridge and the river could be.

- They had set planks out there else and they met the Floris, met my grandpa Becker to get their wedding flowers on the day of his wedding.

Underneath the on bridge.

On the bridge across the wood with planks.

- There used to be a cistern down there and a old tractor, iron tractor.

- Yeah.

- And we always used to always try.

That was our goal in the summertime was show the kid the, the cistern.

You know, that you could see the old farm that used to be a farm - Down there.

Down by the early 1990s, the Department of Transportation in both Nebraska and South Dakota had determined that an upgrade was needed at the Missouri River crossing at Yankton.

As plans were formed for a new bridge, questions remained about what to do with the Meridian Bridge.

- Again, there's those visionaries in town that said, I'm not sure we should let this bridge go away.

And and so then those discussions start.

And that was a really hard discussion for all of those years.

Even after the new bridge was open, it was a hard discussion because you had to have the money to turn this into a pedestrian bridge.

You can't just take a vehicle bridge and say close for vehicles walkers.

Go.

- On October 11th, 2009, the Discovery Bridge opened to traffic.

The Meridian Bridge was closed and converted to pedestrian and bike use.

Only in November of 2011 it opened for recreational use.

And a new chapter began for the bridge at - Yankton.

It sat for a good year, year and a half.

'cause there was still discussions as they were thinking about what is the minimum we should do to turn it into a pedestrian bridge?

What is that gonna cost?

So again, it was never quick.

It was never easy.

But enough people had the vision, stuck with it, continued to have those discussions that they finally, yep, we're gonna do this.

But after it was completed in 2011 and it opened up to the pedestrian traffic, winter, spring, summer, fall, hot, cold, rain, snow.

People that work downtown at lunch breaks after their workday's over.

There are a lot of people that use this bridge.

- The community of Yankton continues to enhance the Meridian Bridge experience and take pride and enjoyment in this Yankton icon.

- We built a plaza with a fountain and spray jet so kids and families could come down and enjoy if there's hot weather.

Not only the kids, mom and dads get their feet wet too, but we also see pets.

People like to bring their dogs down there too.

So that was kind of the idea was, yes, we have Riverside Park, there are events that go on down in Riverside Park, but we know how iconic the Meridian Bridge is to the city.

So let's get some events up by there.

And so not only can riverboat days use it now there's a campground that's developed on the south side.

So we have built in people that will walk across the bridge to come into town for our events such as music at the Meridian Riverboat days.

The other events that are going on, - Many residents wonder what's next for the old bridge at Yankton, no matter what the next hundred years look like, many are certain the bridge and the community will continue to support each other.

- We have that ongoing discussion right now.

We're doing a community comprehensive plan for the next 20 years.

And so this bridge, that park that it sits in, and the green space around it is a huge part of that conversation of how do we tie it to the downtown?

We want people walking downtown, doing business downtown, eating downtown.

We have events down here, weekends, weeknights.

So how does that all tie in and how do we make sure that the Meridian Bridge stays for the next a hundred years?

- The Meridian Bridge brought Nebraska and South Dakota together and completed the Meridian Highway from Mexico City to Winnipeg.

It has impacted thousands of people as it stands and overlooks the Missouri River, the Yankton area, and the people who continue to understand the value of the Meridian Bridge.