On the internet these days, there are pictures and written posts about the Silent Shade Bridge, which is 20 to 25 miles south of Greenwood by road and approximately 40 miles away on the Yazoo River.
But these days, only the remains of the bridge tend to be visible over the river’s surface.
The earlier images show the now almost 100-year-old swing bridge appearing to oddly — or perhaps eerily — float airborne over the Yazoo, which the bridge once spanned. By the early 1980s, it was so rickety that a vehicle would bounce when crossing it.
By the 1990s, Humphreys County supervisors closed the crossing and tied the bridge to a riverbank.
This, said Joe Coker, caused a problem. People would drive across the bridge when heading for Jackson. The Silent Shade community is located at the juncture of Holmes, Humphreys and Leflore counties. There used to be a riverboat landing at Silent Shade.
Coker’s family settled along the west side of the Yazoo at Elmore Landing. “I am on the river,” he said. “We settled there in 1935.” The place is named for Jane Elmore, who owned the property in 1875, Coker said.
Now, said Coker, there’s not much of the bridge left to see.
“Metal fatigue took it. I don’t know when it fell. The bridge is at the bottom of the river,” he said.
Gilliam Ashcraft of Greenwood said some of the swing bridge is still visible, and in recent years he photographed the central pier with portions of the metal structure still attached.
Apparently when the bridge collapsed, it took a piece of Greenwood history from the 1920s along with it. This history is somewhat connected to the city’s landmark Keesler Bridge, which opened in 1925. During 10 months in 2002 and 2003, Keesler was restored at a cost of $1.6 million, mainly with a Mississippi Heritage Trust grant.
Before the two-lane Keesler turn bridge was built, there was a one-lane iron draw bridge crossing the Yazoo between Fulton Street and Grand Boulevard. This bridge, built in 1894, was replaced by Keesler 31 years later, but the old bridge’s structure was stored, according to The Greenwood Commonwealth articles at the time.
On Aug. 19, 1925, the Commonwealth reported that Leflore and Humphreys county supervisors planned to cooperate in construction of the Silent Shade Bridge during a barbecue at Silent Shade Plantation, which is on the east side of the Yazoo.
A little more than a year later, the Commonwealth wrote that plans for the bridge had been approved by “the War Department of the United States,” and Humphreys officials had approved specifications for construction of the bridge. By October 1927, some of the demolished Greenwood bridge’s iron structure had been hauled to Silent Shade.
Moving the metal “will continue steadily until the last piece of iron is on the ground. Then it will be up to Humphreys County to erect the bridge ... ,” the Commonwealth reported.
A half-century later, the Jack family moved from Ontario, Canada, to farm at Silent Shade Plantation — now known as Silent Shade Planting Co. The Jacks — farmers Willard and his wife, Laura Lee, as well as their daughter, Stacie, and son, Gregory, made the move to Silent Shade in 1979, and they were joined by a second son, Jeremy, who was born in 1982. All have since relocated elsewhere, and the family also owns and operates Willard Jack Trucking in Belzoni.
“I grew up on the farm, and my brother, sister and I worked on the farm growing up,” Jeremy said.
“It was a fun place,” he said. “You got to do a lot of things.
"You had a lot of freedom to do what you wanted to do and learn how to grow up on your own. You had to entertain yourself,” Jeremy said. This included wandering over to the bridge.
“I remember playing on the bridge, throwing rocks off it and driving over it,” Jeremy explained.
His father, Willard, said that in order to turn the bridge for a passing tow boat hauling one or two barges to and from a loading dock on the Yazoo just south of Greenwood, he would receive a phone call from the tow boat operator.
“They always had to stop and call me and have me call the county (Humphreys) to come and turn the bridge,” Willard said.
Often, the county workers would hook a cable to a gravel truck to pull one side of the bridge away in order to allow barges to pass.
“We would watch them swing the bridge,” he said.
Over the decades, the river banks that supported the bridge eroded, Willard said. Also, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted bank stabilization and dredging up and down the Yazoo. At some point, the Silent Shade Bridge lost its moorings on both sides of the river. But the bridge remained standing at the center of the Yazoo.
Willard wasn’t surprised to learn that the Silent Shade Bridge was built with iron from the dismantled Yazoo bridge in Greenwood.
“That was common back in those days when an old bridge got torn down,” he said.
He pointed out that Silent Shade Bridge was always “pretty antiquey.” He compared the Keesler Bridge’s design to that of the one at Silent Shade. They were constructed differently.
“They don’t look like they were built in the same century,” he observed.
That’s part of what drew the eye of photographer and blogger Nolen Grogan of Canton, who caught sight of the Silent Shade Bridge floating unattached above the Yazoo.
“I love bridges,” Grogan said. “I hate it when they tear them down. They are works of art.”
This article first appeared in Leflore Illustrated, a quarterly magazine published by The Greenwood Commonwealth.
