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Key Facts |
Bridge Name |
Type | Road | Location | City | Crossing |
| Croswell Swinging Bridge | Suspension | Park Path | Sanilac County, MI | Croswell | Black River |
This bridge is, unfortunately, the closest Michigan will ever come to the Grand Auglaize Bridge. This bridge is a mockery of the beauty of the Grand Auglaize Bridge however! Sanilac County appears to think that this bridge is "the thing to see" in the area, calling it Croswell's Famous Swinging Bridge. I have mixed feelings myself.
This bridge, with limited aesthetic value, and a low degree of historic integrity, in fact falls out of the general scope of this website, but I included it nevertheless to create a complete picture of Sanilac County, and what they consider historic and non-historic. An informative history plaque near this bridge mentions that the bridge was built in 1905 to facilitate easy foot travel of workers to the nearby Michigan Sugar Company sugar factory, today run by Pioneer Sugar. On these grounds, it does have some local significance. Additional significance comes from its length and purpose. This bridge is, according to the plaque near it, the longest suspension footbridge in Michigan. I doubt this bridge has much competition in achieving that record, but it holds true nonetheless. The plaque then mentions that the bridge only had cables on the bottom of the bridge, so the ones on the top that double as handrails are not original. Obviously the addition of railings seems a sensible move for a bridge that serves in a park. However their choice of ugly cyclone fencing which dominates the appearance of this bridge was a poor one indeed. Because of this fencing, the bridges aesthetic value plummets. The fencing by the way is mounted using those plastic "zip cables" which is not very impressive either. Moreover, the "towers/supports" appear to have been replaced. They are just i-beams, but I could see the saddle for the top cables welded onto it. The saddle may be original, as it looked quite old, but the beams it was welded to appear to be newer. This bridge is rather goofy in my opinion. I am not sure if it was like this originally, but the cables from this bridge simply run into the ground at seemingly random places.
I may sound like I am being bitter, and while I do not mean to shoot down a town that has made a bridge one of their town's attractions, I would like to turn the attention to the other bridges in the county that were demolished in recent years. These bridges I feel offered much more to look at than the swinging bridge. The demolition of these bridges was absurd, and gives me plenty to be bitter about in Sanilac County. The Church Road Bridge was a spectacular through truss. The Nicol Road Bridge was a nice pony truss, whose truss superstructure was in unbelievably good condition! Both are today gone, with the exception of the souvenir members and guardrails I saved from them to remember them by.
