Water Under the Bridge

The Missouri River is harder to suit in the matter of beds than a traveling man. Time after time it has gotten out of its bed in the middle of the night with no apparent provocation and has hunted up a new bed. It goes traveling sidewise, rearranges geography and dabbles in real estate.

--Historian George Fitch, 1907

One stormy night in 1946, the Mighty Mo got out of its bed in the Decatur loop, midway between Omaha and Sioux City, and settled in a new bed half a mile to the east. This confronted the civic fathers of Onawa, Iowa (pop. 3,498) and Decatur, Neb. (pop. 808) with an embarrassing problem. After 25 years of pleading, Congress had finally authorized a toll bridge spanning the mile-wide Missouri to connect the two towns. But should they build the bridge over the old or new bed? The Army engineers said to build over the old channel, since the Missouri would probably wander back; if it did not, the engineers "would take the necessary corrective action."

The bridge commission built a mile-long span in 1950, half a mile from the river it was supposed to cross. Nature refused to move the river back, and neither could the engineers without congressional funds. The dry-land bridge grew into a joke to everyone but Wall Street's Cornelius Shields & Co. Shields, a veteran dealer in such issues, and famed yachtsman (TIME, July 27, 1953), headed the underwriting syndicate that sold the 3.75% bond issue (maturing in 1980), on the understanding that in 1952, its first year in operation, the bridge would take in $155,600. As past-due interest rose to $110,802, Shields & Co. made a settlement with the grumbling bondholders, paying them $500,000--about 25-c- on the dollar --for an option to buy the bonds at the remaining 75% of face value (plus accrued interest) within five years.

Finally in 1954, Congress voted $2,000,000, and the engineers forced the Missouri back to its original course. Last week, with water flowing under the bridge, paying traffic began flowing over it. The forecast had been for 100 to 200 vehicles daily the first year, but on the basis of the first few days' average (176 cars daily), the commission happily announced: "It looks like we'll go well over that."

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