ROYAL GORGE AND KATE DODSON

 

Across the Fence

 

By Arvord Abernethy

 

If you happen to be vacationing in Colorado this summer and have never been to the Royal Gorge, may I suggest that you do.  It is a sight to see because of its depth and narrowness.  Over the ages, due to the Rocky Mountain uplift, the Arkansas has had to eat its way through solid granite to a depth of over one thousand feet there in the park, and in some places it it deeper than that.

 

About a hundred years ago the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad  won the right to use the Royal Gorge for its route on the west.  This saved digging a tunnel or going a long way around the Rocky Mountains.  If you go there take the cable car that takes you down to the bottom where the river and the railroad are.  There you will see that the walls of the canyon are so close together there was no room for the railroad, so some type of bridge had to be built that would let the river run under it.

 

The interesting part to us is that the bridge was designed by the grandfather of the late Bruce Morton [Bruce Randall Morton, Sr.], who was the Hamilton resident engineer for the Texas Highway Department.  I learned this while visiting with Mrs. Morton [Artie May (Hsardman) Morton. who died October 13, 1989], a resident of Leisure Lodge.  Her son, John, was here from Waco, so he agreed to send me a Xerox copy  of the original drafting of the bridge.    The draft and the accompanying letter that explained it were dated Nov. 4, 1883, so were too dim to be used in this column.  I copied I copied the main part of the draft (shown here) to give you some idea as to how the problem was solved.

The letter read in part, "It is certainly a curious piece of work , as well as ingenious, it being about the only thing that would fill the bill."

 

While at the Royal Gorge, be sure to take a stroll across the suspension bridge to get a better look at the canyon walls with their varied formations.  It is over one thousand feet above the river and is said to be the highest suspension bridge in the world.

 

Mrs. Morton was born in Moab, Utah, and has some interesting memories of her childhood.  She has a brother still living there.  A while back she received a booklet that gave the history and story of the Moab Community Baptist Church that they published for their 75th anniversary.  Mrs. Morton's grandmother was one of the charter members.

 

I was talking to Kate Dodson the other day and she was telling of what a fine time she and 18 other Hamilton people had on their recent European trip. A trip that took them through England , Holland , France , Switzerland and Italy .

 

She was saying that one of the very interesting things they did was to stay in some homes in Amsterdam rather than hotels. She, along with Docia Blackburn, Kerri Barnett, and Leslie Kelley, stayed two nights in the home of a nice Dutch family in Amsterdam . It was a nice home in a good part of town, but the people could not speak English. In spite of this handicap, they enjoyed very much, their stay with them. The breakfast they served was more like a dinner than a breakfast. They served eight kinds of rolls and bread along with different cheeses and meats.

 

The bus that was carrying them  to the home the first night was running late, so some didn’t get to their home until nearly 2 a.m. Mike Pool, Gerald Wayne Scott, John Jordan and Kirk Joseph were taken to a home where the people couldn’t speak English, but did try to use some words. When they knocked at the door, the lady came and answered, but in her poor English said “goodbye” instead of “hello.”

 

They found a big contrast in the weather there from what it was when they got back to Texas; some snow fell on them one day while they were in Switzerland .

 

Kate reported a wonderful friendly spirit among the group that went and already some are wanting to go back.

 

Someone has said that you can tell when you are getting old when your little black book contains only names ending in M. D.