GOSHEN COUNTY – The Goshen County Chapter of the National Historical Society met the evening of Tuesday, February 25 at the Platte Valley Bank Community Room. The meeting was called to order by past president, Mary Houser, at 7 p.m. Houser filled in for the chapter president, Marge Myers, who was out of town. The meeting was opened with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. Houser introduced the speaker of the evening, a “cherished” board member, Dean McClain. 

“We have an old saying in aviation that’s been around for a while. My teacher told me when I was in school that no one was going to pay me to sit and look out the window,” McClain said. “Yet, here I am, an airline pilot. I’m not an airline pilot, but I spend a lot of time looking out the window. We used to do a lot of spraying over Saratoga and over the valley here. We’d go over every weekend, spray mosquitoes for the weekend and come back there and work.”

According to McClain who has flown for Ag Flyers for many years, flying across the Laramie Plains is “pretty awesome.” McClain noted there isn’t much to see or look at but one day, he spotted an old bridge in the middle of nowhere with no roads leading to it. Just an old, well-built, bridge in the middle of a pasture. 

“I always wondered what was going on with this bridge. I guess, curiosity finally got me,” McClain said. “We did some work for the landlord one day and I asked him about it. He didn’t know about it; it’s just always been there. You see, there’s really no county roads going to it. It’s a county bridge,” McClain said while pointing to a photograph of a wooden bridge, out in the middle of nowhere. “If you zoom in, there’s a medallion up on the top there. The medallion says the ‘Pueblo Bridge Company, 1900.’” 

McClain further explained the mysterious old bridge made a “decent” historical project to report back to the chapter with. 

“It’s really in pretty good shape,” McClain said as he showed a few different angles of the bridge. “It’s not especially wide like you would have for a vehicle bridge. It would be more like a horse and buggy bridge, of course, it would be in 1900.”

McClain noted the Pueblo Bridge Company used ore for the metals in the bridge which more than likely came from the Sunrise Mine.

“It’s almost certain this ore came from Sunrise to Pueblo, refined into or molded into bridge material and hauled back up there,” McClain said. “It’s ten miles north of Bosler, in the middle of nowhere up here,” McClain indicated an area on the map. “If you folks are familiar with – this is Wheatland Reservoir, Number Two, the big lake – the bridge, I outlined all this so you can see it. The bridge is right in here and there’s no county road to it.”

McClain explained the bridge was in pretty good shape and even more so considering how it was probably constructed in the 1900s. McClain indicated the parts of the bridge needed to be hauled a great distance and it was more than likely done by horse. 

“It was a lot of trouble to get it there,” McClain said. “These caissons, the way they added those, they hauled them in, in pieces. They put a man down inside those and they started digging. Somebody lifted the material out and he kept digging until it sunk down to the depth they wanted. Then, they hand carried rocks over to those, filled those up and pour concrete mixed on site to firm the whole thing up.” 

According to McClain, the process of building was very different back then compared to how things are constructed today, in a fast pace.  

“They had to set up a blacksmith shop on site or forge because those are all hot rivets. That bridge is put together with hot rivets. It was quite an undertaking. Obviously, it wasn’t a slapdash affair. Those are the county commissioners at the time,” McClain said pointing to metal plaque with names on the bridge. “It was cast right into the bridge. There was a cast iron plaque there. I looked all of those guys up and I really didn’t get anywhere looking them up. I tried to find the minutes from the county commission meetings and I didn’t get anywhere. So, it’s still somewhat of a mystery.” 

McClain was even more puzzled on the bridge, considering there was no reason for a bridge to be there but through research, McClain learned there had been a lot of traffic out in that part of the county years ago. 

“The first traffic in that country initially was across here,” McClain explained pointing to a section of the display map. “This was the first road across here. This was called the Halleck Road. It was a military road from Fort Halleck over by Elk Mountain. From Fort Laramie to Fort Halleck, that was the military road. They only used it a couple of years because Fort Halleck was there a couple of years, but that was the first road across there,” McClain said.

“They had to ford the river. At that time, the Laramie River, of course, was pretty good sized in spring runoff. So, the ford actually, I did find where the ford is marked on the map. They cut over to the lake and then they forded the river,” McClain explained. “It was right here in what’s now in the middle of the lake. The ford where it went over is covered in the lake now. The road, actually, like a lot of these roads, continued to be a road to start as a trail.”

McClain further explained the road continued to be used for many years. 

“That’s how a lot of these trails, these roads in those places, ended up crooked, wandering all over, they were never surveyed in,” McClain said. “A modern road surveyed goes straight with the section of lines, more or less. Those old roads were how a horse would wander so that kind of makes sense. That was there a couple of years. It came through Halleck Canyon – Fort Laramie – up on the plains, across the river, straight to Elk Mountain and Fort Halleck. It was a little over 100 miles so it took four or five days walking across there.”

“There was actually an incident where two soldiers froze to death on that road,” McClain explained. “You can imagine talking off across here in the winter or fall in this county and unpredictable weather. They didn’t have forecasts so there were some people trapped and killed on that road.”

The history lesson continued until 8 p.m. The public is invited to attend the chapter’s monthly meeting on Tuesday, March 25 at 7 p.m. at the Platte Valley Bank Community Room.