The Indian trail had given away and had gradually become merged into
a public road, here and there forced back to section lines, but in
the main sustaining its diagonal course across the country and being
known as the Topeka and Ottawa State Road.
Jacob Welchans was not only an extraordinarily fine surveyor, whose
corner-stones and monuments are now and always will be recognized in
Shawnee County as the best evidence of the location of land
boundaries, but he also engaged in country school-teaching, and a
number of times taught in the little school-house established near
the Wakarusa River and by the old Sac and Fox spring. The ford across
the Wakarusa at this point was not an extra good one. The bottom was
rock, but there was a steep hill on one side and a low, springy place
on the other; and, excepting times when the stream was very low, the
water was of considerable depth over the fording place, and it was
not an uncommon sight to see a farmer's boy on an old gray mare
fording children across in the morning and in the afternoon, so that
they could go to and from school.
This was long before city men commenced buying up farm land, and
therefore the Wakarusa Valley was quite well populated, and the
little school boasted an attendance of from fifty to sixty children
during the entire school year. Jacob Welchans became ambitious that
there should be a bridge across the Wakarusa at that point, not only
for the benefit of the school children and the neighborhood
generally, but because that was the fording place for the travel that
fell into the Topeka and Ottawa State Road. He called attention of
the county officers to the importance of the road to the city of
Topeka and to the county of Shawnee, and by sheer force of character
he impressed upon them the conviction that a bridge should be erected
at the place indicated, and that it should be a stone bridge builded
from bed rock, and to stay.
The usual formalities were indulged in, and the contract was let to
George Evans, who commenced the work in the summer of 1878, and when
the school commenced in October the bridge was in course of
construction. It was a great time for the neighborhood and for the
school children, who spent much of their intermission periods around
the work and the workmen. Some of the workmen were negroes who talked
French, and they were a lot of fun. They camped at different places
around near the spring, boiled their coffee in old tomato cans, slept
on the ground, hunted squirrels and rabbits between working hours,
and in many other ways exhibited interesting activities, to the
delight of the youngsters. After one arch of the bridge was up and
the false work had been taken out, it commenced to crack and fold and
double, and then fell. The school children had just arrived on the
scene after being dismissed at recess, and it seemed for all the
world as though the arch had fallen down to give them the benefit of
the crash and the excitement. No one was hurt, and the wreck was soon
cleared away, so that the work could go on. The bridge was finished
in due time, and for nearly forty years it has justified the faith of
those who planned and constructed it. Once, after an extraordinary
flood that filled the waterways almost to the top, Jim Baker said:
"She is a mighty good makeshift in time of high water; no tin bridge
for me." It not only served the purpose of travel, but it has become
a landmark in southern Shawnee County, and it always will be a
monument to the old trail and to the wisdom and foresight of Jacob
Welchans and the other county officers who were responsible for its
being constructed.