codyg1985’s Think Tank

He walks into the building and is greeted with the question, “Are you lost?” by the clerk sitting at her desk.

The residents of Myrtlewood aren’t accustomed to visitors. When a rickety one-lane wooden bridge that served both automobile and train traffic was deemed unsafe and closed four years ago, this small Marengo County town was practically cut off from the outside world.

The log trucks that rolled across the bridge over the Tombigbee River to the Georgia Pacific paper mill in Naheola stopped coming. The convenience store closed because of the ensuing lack of traffic on Alabama Highway 114.

Myrtlewood truly became a dead-end town.

“There was one way in and one way out,” longtime resident Fannie Lawrence said. “This was just about like a little ghost town.”

But after what seemed like an endless wait for local residents and employees of the paper mill, a new bridge opened in October.

The $20 million span is named after Sen. Richard Shelby, who secured much of the money for the project, though Goodloe Sutton, publisher of The Democrat-Reporter in Linden, is given much of the credit for pushing legislators and Congressmen to get money for a new bridge.

“I grin every time I go across it,” said Dan Homan, a paper mill employee. “It saves us Demopolis folks about 30 miles a day.”

The detour was a particular nuisance to Myrtlewood residents and paper mill workers who live only a few miles from the mill. They had to take Alabama Highway 69 south to Nanfalia, Alabama Highway 10 west to Lavaca and then 114 north to Naheola, a detour of nearly 30 miles, costing them about $3 in gasoline each way.

“You’re talking about some happy guys coming from the paper mill now,” Lawrence said.

Most communities tire of big trucks lumbering through town. Myrtlewood residents relish their return.

A Budweiser truck delivered beer to the reopened Myrtlewood Convenience Store on Tuesday afternoon as other vehicles whizzed by on the way to some destination in Choctaw County, just past the river crossing.

“It’s been really dead here,” said local postmaster Annette Horton as she watched the blur of passing cars through the front window of the post office. “It’s nice to see traffic going through.”

Horton, also a member of the town council, said that the only outsiders who came into Myrtlewood prior to the bridge’s opening were either headed to the river to fish or to the local hunting club.

“It pretty much shut us down. There was nothing coming in,” she said. “It was tough on the town.”

Myrtlewood, with its 136 residents, is a one caution light burg about 10 miles west of Linden. It has a post office, washeteria, convenience store and not much else.

Founded in 1886, the town is named after the plentiful crepe myrtle trees in the area.

“I like the quiet, laid-back attitude here,” Horton said. “It would be nice for it to pick up some more though, for some more families to move in.”

When the convenience store closed, residents had to drive to Linden for a loaf of bread or a gallon of gas. Many went to Meridian for medical care and the closed road added 25 miles to the trip.

Lawrence, now a cashier at the convenience store, said the closing of the old bridge and the subsequent closing of the store upset people.

“Other than this, the water system is about the only revenue the town has,” she said. “The town about dried up.”

Even though the old bridge was such a scary ride that some people refused to cross it, many local residents were mad it was shut down because they realized the hardship it would cause.

Taylor Cannon, a resident of the Shiloh community in southern Marengo County, ignored the “No Trespassing” sign on a fence blocking the entrance to the old bridge and took a visitor across the perilous structure Tuesday.

The past four years of little maintenance have worn down the bridge, with rotted planks leaving holes that afford a view of the ground about 30 feet below.

The train tracks, set directly on a steel truss superstructure, continue to be used. The bridge’s ability to hold the weight of a train was never in question.

It was concern about the load bearing ability of the wood planks and the jumbled mess of traffic that led to the bridge’s demise as a highway.

The one lane served traffic from both directions, in addition to the trains that passed through several times each day. The span was also a drawbridge and was raised several times a day to accommodate river traffic.

An antiquated traffic light helped vehicles negotiate the bridge.

“If you saw a car crossing in front of you, you hauled tail across the bridge because you’d have to wait several minutes if you didn’t,” said Cannon, another employee of the mill.

The new bridge dwarfs the old structure, rising 75 feet in the air with a span of 405 feet.

The bridge was originally set to open in 2003, but numerous problems led to delays in construction.

Chuck Davis, vice president of engineering for Scott Bridge Co. of Opelika, the builder of the bridge, said the river, which drains much of north Alabama and Mississippi, flooded several times.

In May 2003, work was stopped for the entire month because the water level was too high, often 30 feet above normal.

“A large percentage of the delay was because of the river,” Davis said. “Whenever the river got up it stayed up forever.”

Another delay was caused by the riverbank, which kept sliding into the cofferdam, a structure created to allow workers to build bridge piers underwater, Davis said.

Residents weren’t pleased with the delays, but all is well now that the bridge has opened.

A dedication ceremony will be held at some point, but it hasn’t been scheduled yet.