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An Urban Legend: Workers Buried in a Concrete Piling of the U.S. 190 Mississippi River Bridge From the Smiley Anders column, Baton Rouge Advocate, 2/5/99 (reprinted with permission)
After some readers said the story of a worker being buried in a concrete piling of the U.S. 190 Mississippi River bridge was true--I termed it an "urban legend"--I went back to our Aug. 10, 1940, special section published when the bridge was dedicated. In several long, detailed articles about the construction of the bridge, including descriptions of each of its six pilings, there was no mention of a worker being buried. Readers offered clues as to how the story started: Bill Reid says, "While working on the construction of the old Mississippi River bridge, my father, H. M. Reid, fell off of the bridge and into a caisson of one of the support columns. The water had not been pumped out at the time, so he was not hurt. It was very cold that winter, and before they got him to the shore, his coveralls were frozen. He lived to finish that job and many others around the U.S. Dad never mentioned anything about anyone being buried there." Alice Cobb of Port Allen says that years ago, before the new bridge was built, "at the same time each year we would see a wreath of flowers placed at the foot of the old bridge. My dad said it was for a worker who was killed during the construction of this bridge." And Nelson J. Bourgeois of Fordoche says a worker named J.C. Brown, who "lived in Fordoche, where we grew up together," fell off a barge during construction of the old bridge. His body was never recovered, says Nelson. |
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