Building the Bridges That Unite Us

We take our bridges for granted now, and it’s hard to realize there was a time when we didn’t have them. 

Building bridges is often used as a metaphor for developing relationships between people and cultures, but in Montgomery, the bridges solved our physical division as it brought the community closer together.

After the first bridge was given to us, generations of children who lived on the east side of the river were able to cross the bridge to attend school. The east side families now had access to grocery stores, church, post office and whatever the village had to offer. 

In the earliest days of the village, the only means of crossing the Fox River was a ford at the end of Jefferson Street. On the eastern bank, the road picked up again to become Montgomery Road. 

An 1842 county survey map indicates there was a bridge there in 1840 at the “fording point.” And there are rumors of evidence of a bridge, but nobody is certain. The area nevertheless is identified on this map as “Gray’s Bridge.”

In the 1859 directory, a paragraph in the introduction mentions "a bridge across the river to the East side, where the groves of trees rendering the location inviting for residents.” This is the only reference to a bridge since the 1842 survey map, and no other information about it is known. It was probably located at the Jefferson Street ford since Montgomery Road still led to the river at that point. 

Anna Pearce, former postmistress for 50 years, told that her grandfather, John Young lived on the east side of the river.  There was no bridge and he or one of his sons used a small boat to pole people across to the foundry on the other side.   

When Aurora replaced its two wooden covered bridges in 1868, one was sent upstream to North Aurora and the other floated down to Montgomery. The old bridge was a very picturesque addition, the subject of many postcards and paintings, but clearly it had seen better days before Montgomery acquired it. Nevertheless, it made huge difference in the lives of many people.

When the bridge was in place, Montgomery Road was reconfigured to curve north at South Broadway a short distance before curving west to join up with Mill Street.

The late Jake Mall grew up on a farm on South Broadway. He remembered crossing the bridge to get a gallon of kerosene to fill the family’s lamps. The container had no cap on the spout, so he would push a potato onto it so it wouldn’t spill out on his clothes. His father’s truck farm straddled the river; with the western portion, the asparagus fields, located where the Nicholson School playground is today.

The late Natalie Olson Schroeder told about moving into a house on the corner of Sherman Avenue and Broadway. That first night, Natalie’s mother sent her and her brother Clifford over to a grocery store in Montgomery for a loaf of bread. 

“We had to go over through the covered bridge and it was very scary, as the bridge looked so long and it had only dim lights to show the way," she said. Before long she knew every nook and cranny in the bridge and watched with tears in her eyes when it was torn down.

By 1913 the well-worn bridge was shedding its boards into the river. It was time to act. There was a controversy over the ownership of the bridge and the Village Board declared that no part of it was in the village; rather, that it was in Aurora Township. The board claimed the west bank of the river as the village line.

In the end, the township accepted the responsibility. When the bridge was dismantled the remaining boards simply floated downstream.

Every day that the replacement of the bridge was being debated, people on the east side of the river had to cope with other means of crossing. After a long day’s work, a very tired young Jake Mall would walk to the south end of town and cross the river at the Jefferson Street ford and turn north to his home on South Broadway. 

Before long the township began building a replacement. The first year the bridge was in use, a huge ice jamb nearly took it out. Everybody watched with dread. Lives on both side of the river had been altered during that bridgeless time, and they developed a new appreciation for the cement span that brought them together.

Another, smaller bridge that some people remember was a steel suspension bridge that reached from Keck Avenue to an Island in the Fox River. The few families that lived on the island were displaced. The bridge was removed around 1948 when the Park District bought the island. That bridge is in use today at Blackberry Creek on the nature trail.

The bridge pictured above, crossing the river at Mill Street, is the current cement bridge. Appreciation for our bridge and what it means to Montgomery is shown every spring when the Beautification Committee fills the planters with bright new blooming plants.

It’s hard to imagine life without the bridge. We owe so much to those who came before us and worked to make this a united community.