– Letters to the Editor –

Letter to the Editor:

It’s going to be bad if we don’t get any businesses in. There are no businesses on Main Street. There are no businesses for our kids to go to. Our kids aren’t opening businesses.

We’re going to be a ghost town like Gilman, if we don’t do something.

Cheryl Potaczek, Cornell

Letter to the Editor:

I have lived by the Cobban Bridge for 72 years. Many people pull into the historical marker and take pictures of the bridge, as well as area residents taking high school graduation and other special moments.

When the bridge was closed in 2017, I attended some of the public meetings and listened to the many residents asking how this piece of history could be saved. In 2018, Chippewa County decided that the bridge would have to be demolished and replaced with a new structure.

Nearly every month since that decision, we have seen volunteers of the Cobban Bridge preservation group near the bridge. In speaking with them, they intended to relocate half of the bridge across the highway, in a new park that people could stop at.

As we understand it, their efforts have ceased, after their proposal was rejected. It took so long for the bureaucracy to request proposals and then so many additional requirements were added.

They were required to remove both spans, and also all the concrete above and below the water, in just a few months. Then, they were required to rehabilitate it to government specifications. The most important issue, was the risk that there might not be any of the estimated $1.2 million cost of the demolition available for reimbursement.

It appears that in the future, the traveling public will remember this valuable piece of Chippewa County history, by only reading a refurbished historical marker. The bridge is the oldest Pennsylvania truss bridge in the state, and it would be sad to see it destroyed completely.

Wencle Stipek, Jim Falls