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By all accounts, and by a number
of standards, Tuesday, September 17, 1940, was a landmark
day in the history of the Mississippi Delta. Great excitement
surrounded the dedication of the new $4.5 million dollar
Benjamin G. Humphreys
bridge across the Mississippi River, and more than 5000
people turned out for the opening ceremony at the bridge’s
toll house south of Greenville. With the cutting of
a ribbon and the opening of the bridge to traffic the
following month, life in Greenville and across the Delta
would change forever, for this was the day when people
of the region could begin to reap prosperity on a new
river of commerce. US Highway 82 would be one leg on
a system of new highways that ran from New York City
to Los Angeles, an “all-weather route from coast-to
coast.”
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Before the bridge, the only way
to get vehicular traffic and local freight across the
river was by ferry. Milton C. Smith, (pictured)
mayor of Greenville in the late 1930s, recognized growth
in the “Port City of the Delta” was being hindered by
the lack of a permanent river crossing; Smith understood
his city’s future would depend on forging “a link in
an
important transcontinental highway and the adding of
an extensive Arkansas trade.” There had been talk on
a regional level of getting money for a bridge at Greenville,
and in 1936, a group called the Arkansas-Mississippi-Alabama
US 82 Association was formed for that purpose. Final
success, however, would result from initiative at a
more local level. In 1937, Mayor Smith began working
with John A. Fox, secretary of the Washington County
Chamber of Commerce, to get Congressional approval for
the bridge and to raise the $2.5 million (Fox’s estimate)
needed for construction.
The United States was still in the middle of the Great
Depression; getting money or political support for a
multi-million dollar project would not be an easy task.
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