Back in 1981, Route 71 North of Maryville was Dangerous to Travel

This week (Page 10), columnist Marc Trump discusses road and bridge safety. Back in 1981, it was a major issue as well. On Route 71, there was a bridge on a curve north of Clearmont just south of the Iowa Border. The December 9th Hopkins Journal reported that there were five accidents, nine injuries, and three deaths in the previous 2½ years on the bridge. All of the dead and injured were under 25 years old.

The final straw happened on October 14th, 1981 when two Northwest students were killed when they struck the side of the bridge. Clarinda had a disco that was popular with Northwest students, and there was a lot of car traffic between Maryville and Clarinda. All of the accidents happened at night, and all of them involved vehicles driving south from Clarinda. Back in those days, the legal drinking age was 21 in Missouri, but was only 18 in Iowa.

The accidents were occurring despite the DOT putting curve signs, white paint, and white strips to warn drivers to slow down, along with the Student Senate doing an education campaign to warn drivers about the dangerous road in question.

The Northwest Student Senate at the time organized a massive letter writing campaign to then-Senator Tom Eagleton and then-State Representative Everett Brown. The cost to fix the bridge was an estimated $72,000 at the time to widen it out.

The bridge in question was not the only dangerous spot on Route 71. South of Burlington Junction, there was a dangerous curve, nicknamed “Dead Man’s Curve,” that also claimed a lot of lives over the years.

Since then, the road is straight from Clearmont to the Iowa border, and the bridge is now much wider. The original bridge had been built in 1929. But sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t please anybody. In 1984, the DOT proposed replacing the Middlefork and the East Fork Bridge on Route 46 between Grant City and Allendale. Led in part by then-Presiding Commissioner George Young and then-Superintendent Robert Bruner, there was another massive outcry against the proposal, citing the difficulty of getting from Allendale to Grant City and the difficulty of busing kids. The DOT then built low-water crossings that could be used when the water was not too high.