The Saga of the Stillwater Lift Bridge: A Preservation Case Study Stillwater Bridge, 1942 (Florence Parlin, artist; Minnesota Historical Society) The Saga of the Stillwater Lift Bridge: A Preservation Case Study Charlene Roise, Historian Hess, Roise and Company Sponsors: Minnesota Department of Transportation Wisconsin Department of Transportation This Lift Bridge publication fulfills a portion of the environmental mitigation required of the St. Croix Crossing Project. Contents 1. The Lift Bridge: A Community Icon ............................................................................1 2. Lake Saint Croix: Asset and Obstacle ..........................................................................5 3. Floating Innovation .......................................................................................................8 4. Upgrading to Steel........................................................................................................22 The Corps, the Crossing, and the Controversy .........................................................26 The Setting: Planning the Parks ...............................................................................29 Designing Engineers .................................................................................................34 Grading Gets Going ..................................................................................................38 The Big Bid ...............................................................................................................40 Maintaining the Crossing ..........................................................................................42 Construction ..............................................................................................................44 Open at Last ..............................................................................................................50 5. River vs. Road ..............................................................................................................56 6. Beginning of the End? .................................................................................................63 7. Round 1 of Alternatives ...............................................................................................66 To Build or Not to Build: The Draft EIS ...................................................................66 1990 Draft EIS to 1995 Final EIS .............................................................................72 Another Perspective: Section 106 .............................................................................72 Conclusion without a Conclusion .............................................................................74 8. Bridge over Troubled Waters ......................................................................................75 A New Route ..............................................................................................................78 On the Homefront ......................................................................................................82 Hope for the Historic Bridge ....................................................................................83 i 9. New Players, A New Process, and New Perspectives ......................................................................................................85 Mediation Momentum ...............................................................................................85 Highway 36 Partnership Study .................................................................................89 Lift Bridge Limbo .....................................................................................................90 Courts and Congress .................................................................................................98 10. Constructing the New Crossing ..............................................................................100 11. History for the Future ..............................................................................................112 12. Passing the Torch: August 2, 2017 ..........................................................................114 Acknowledgments .........................................................................................................124 Selected Bibliography ....................................................................................................125 Abbreviations .................................................................................................................130 Index ................................................................................................................................132 Endnotes..........................................................................................................................138 ii 1. The Lift Bridge: A Community Icon tillwater rises up a bluff on the west side of Lake Saint Croix, a widening in the river of the same name. The waterway is an ever-changing constant―from spring floods to winter’s icy beauty. It is busiest in the summer Swhen fishermen, tourists, and partiers parade by in boats and festivals bring logrolling contests and fireworks. The bridge has crossed the waterway since 1931 and has remained much the same season in, season out. While performing a utilitarian service of carrying vehicular, pedestrian, and other traffic between western Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota, it has won the hearts of many residents and visitors and earned a top place in Stillwater’s iconography. The bridge has inspired artists to sketch, paint, take photographs, and write poetry. Images of the bridge have appeared on mugs, bumper stickers, baseball caps, police cars and letterheads. A local group proclaimed, “The Lift Bridge is the logo and trademark of historic Stillwater. It is to Stillwater what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris, the Golden Gate Bridge [is] to San Francisco, the Brooklyn Bridge [is] to New York, and the Gateway Arch [is] to St. Louis.” As fans of the bridge have observed, “In a town filled with antiques, the bridge itself is a prominent antique.”1 Courtesy of discoverstillwater.com The bridge has also had detractors, including drivers stuck in daily traffic jams as they approached it. When it was built, the structure could easily handle the volume and types of vehicles it was designed to carry. Minimal river traffic meant the lift span was rarely operated. Each passing decade, though, brought greater demands on every front. Some began calling for the bridge’s replacement after World War II. The chorus had grown loud enough to prompt action by the 1980s, when planning for a new structure began in earnest. The fate of the 1931 bridge, which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, complicated the process, as did the natural setting. Congress had designated the Saint Croix River north of Stillwater a Wild and Scenic River in 1968. Four years later, the boundary was extended south to the river’s mouth in the Mississippi, which added Lake Saint Croix to the Courtesy of Lift Bridge Brewing Company designated area. 1 Courtesy of DiscoverStillwater.com Charlene Roise, photographer 2 Charlene Roise, photographer William Ersland, artist; courtesy of William Ersland 3 Although a new crossing was Administration, U.S. Army Corps eventually built, the process of Engineers, U.S. Coast Guard, leading to the ribbon cutting U.S. Environmental Protection on August 2, 2017, was long, Agency, National Park Service, complex and contentious. There U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, were stops and starts, lawsuits Advisory Council on Historic and mediation, studies and Preservation, and the Departments more studies. As an interstate of Transportation, Departments project involving two states and of Natural Resources, and State a number of federal agencies, Historic Preservation Offices of there were inherent conflicts. both Minnesota and Wisconsin.”2 As one writer observed: “The Various levels of politicians also intersection of three important but influenced the process. Add to the competing goals of public policy― mix a collection of local, state, and enhancement of transportation national advocacy groups, as well as services, preservation of historic the citizens of several communities resources and protection of a in the immediate area who would wild and scenic river―gradually be directly affected by the outcome, produced gridlock between seven and it is not surprising the process federal and six state agencies, took decades. including the Federal Highway Mark Raney, illustrator; courtesy of DiscoverStillwater.com The following chapters tell the tale of the historic lift bridge, the crossings that proceeded it, and the efforts to save it and build a new bridge. Charlene Roise, photographer 4 2. Lake Saint Croix: Asset and Obstacle eople have been drawn to the Saint Croix In the early 1840s, “no one thought of a town here, River for millennia. The steep bluffs, only a sawmill site was anticipated.” A hotel and Pverdant valley, and sparkling waterway general store appeared in 1844. With the construction create a dramatic and bountiful landscape. The of more shops, residences, and in 1847, a saloon, river’s headwaters are in northern Wisconsin. a community began to emerge. The town was The section where the river widens by incorporated in 1854, four years before Minnesota Stillwater, Minnesota, and Houlton, Wisconsin, statehood. “It became evident that an active town was is known as Lake Saint Croix. Twenty-five