Granite in the river

In one of our periodic posts of incredibly fascinating but un-Hesch-related articles from old newspapers, we posted this clip from the St Cloud Journal.  It was September 1896 and a block of granite had fallen THRU the St Germain Street bridge.  The idea interested me, and made me laugh--can you imagine?



Back then, how exactly do you retrieve a ten ton block from the muddy bottom of the Mississippi?  And, WHO pays for it?  It was about to be shipped, so some other project was held up, too.  Certainly, somebody needed to be sued, right?

(I know, I know--they were able to winch an even larger  chunk of stone out of the quarries in the first place, but that was with machines anchored to the sides of the pit.  This was down a steep wooded river bank and sunk in mud.  I would have liked to watch, and I expect loads of people did ☺)

The bridge in question, but are we looking east or west?  I think
"10 feet from the waters' edge" would have been fairly deep, either way.

On the day of the incident, the report mentions how planks gave way, and the stone made a 12 foot hole in the deck as it fell "thru the steel work to the river below".  Street car and wagon traffic would necessarily be held up for awhile, and the cost might be as high as $500.
Really, nobodies fault....but by 3 weeks later, the block itself had been damaged, not to mention the wagon it was on.  No wonder the city council rejected the demand.
I tried to follow up this afternoon to see if there actually was a law suit, but Chronicling America is down for maintenance.

I'll let you know ☺.