Arkansas bridge's loss again cuts off home

Newell Holland of Clarksville looks at the ruins of a swinging bridge near Oark on Friday. The bridge was heavily damaged April 29 by floodwaters on the Mulberry River. Holland and other volunteers have worked to rebuild the bridge twice before.
Newell Holland of Clarksville looks at the ruins of a swinging bridge near Oark on Friday. The bridge was heavily damaged April 29 by floodwaters on the Mulberry River. Holland and other volunteers have worked to rebuild the bridge twice before.

OARK -- High water has separated Cathie Brown from her home, at least until the Mulberry River recedes and she can drive through the riverbed.

RELATED ARTICLE

http://www.arkansas…">36 soaked counties called disasters


Video by Denise Gosnell

photo

Cathie Brown removes pies Friday from the oven at the Oark Grocery and Cafe, where she works. Brown hasn't been able to get to her house since floodwater on the Mulberry River damaged the Oark swinging bridge April 29.

photo

A map showing the location of the swinging bridge in Oark.

That could be weeks.

Brown's family home is isolated by the river, which flows for about 70 miles through the Ozark Mountains before emptying into the Arkansas River near the city of Mulberry in Crawford County. The river is popular with canoeists and kayakers, particularly in the spring.

For about nine months out of the year, Brown can drive her car through the riverbed, which intersects her driveway. But to come and go during the rainy season, she has to walk across a 150-foot-long swinging footbridge that's also a tourist attraction.

On April 29, thunderstorms turned the Mulberry River into a raging torrent that toppled the swinging bridge's center support, ripped out some support cables and left the bridge lying in the river.

"That swinging bridge is the only way in when it floods, and it floods all the time this time of year," said Brown, 63. "That's our lifeline. My cows, my animals are over there."

Brown said Johnson County sheriff's deputies had to rescue her daughter and son-in-law, who were stranded in her house during the April 29 storm.

A friend has given Brown a rental house to stay in for a month. Brown works at the Oark Grocery and Cafe, which is 2.7 miles west of the swinging bridge.

Brown said her grandfather, David Arbaugh, built the original swinging bridge at the site in 1938. It stayed in place until 1983, when it was destroyed by a flood, Brown said. The bridge was rebuilt. Then, in 1995, another flood wiped it out. The cycle of destruction and repair happened every other year for a while. Now it's an annual occurrence.

The swinging bridge leads from Johnson County Road 5440 southeast across the Mulberry River to Brown's property.

Volunteers led by Tom Cogan of Clarksville rebuilt the bridge last year and the year before.

Cogan is the parks and recreation director for Clarksville, 25 miles to the south. As a volunteer, he had help from about 50 others last year, but it was a slow process with people working mostly on the weekends.

After surveying the situation on Friday, Cogan said the bridge can be repaired, but it needs to be raised a few more feet to keep it from sagging in the water when the river is up. The work would probably require $7,000 to $10,000 in materials. The labor will be donated by Cogan and some of the others who have repaired the bridge before.

"I'm not really crazy about putting it back up again if it's just going to get knocked down every year," Cogan said. "I've put it up twice and it's gone down twice, and it's lasted less than a year each time."

Cogan said the workers raised the bridge supports 4 feet in 2015 and 3 feet last year.

"We thought the last go around that we'd be good for another 50 years," said Newell Holland, a union ironworker from Clarksville who helped repair the bridge the past two years.

"I think God's just trying to humble us," Cogan said.

The problem, he said, is that the river has shifted course over the past few years and now approaches the swinging bridge in a more direct route, causing a stronger flow of water against the supports. A center support in the river splits the bridge into two sections -- about 100 feet and 50 feet. A stream-restoration project is helping to mitigate the erosion that has caused that situation.

Cogan said there should be steel and concrete uprights on Brown's side of the river, instead of wooden poles to support that end of the bridge. Also, the cables could be anchored farther back on the hillside on the opposite side of the Mulberry, he said.

Cogan said it might take six months to build a better bridge at the site.

Cogan said he's considering more of a suspension bridge design, with sides that are higher than the handrail. It would look a bit more like a very small version of the Golden Gate Bridge in California or the Beaver Bridge on the White River at the town of Beaver in Northwest Arkansas.

Metro on 05/07/2017

Upcoming Events