Valorie Fauquier created this pieced and embroidered quilt for the 2015 Benton County Historical Society quilt raffle. Nine local landmarks are commemorated here. Members of the Historical Society sold raffle tickets through the summer and the drawing was held October 31. Mr. and Mrs. Troy Kessner of Independence Missouri won the drawing. They donated it to the Historical Society so everyone could enjoy it. We found it hanging in the Visitor Center, overlooking Truman Dam.
The center block commemorates the “Upper Swinging Bridge,” the last surviving Joe Dice bridge in Benton County. According to the explanatory legend posted nearby, “The Upper Swinging Bridge is the lone survivor of the 31 swinging bridges built in Benton County from 1895-1937. Built in 1904 by the famous local bridge builder Joe Dice, it was rebuilt by Dice after the original bridge was destroyed by a cyclone. It served highway 7 traffic until 1969.” It is now a pedestrian walkway over the Osage River outflow from Truman Dam.
Joseph A. Dice is one of the more interesting characters we discovered in our research for Damming the Osage (see pages 74-76). A self-taught engineer, Dice made his mark and living building swinging bridges across the Osage and its tributaries in what is now the Lake of the Ozarks region. Born in 1866, he built his first “swinger” in 1897 at a ferry crossing of the Osage near where US 65 crosses it today. “The Hackberry Bridge” cost $3,000.
A couple of Dice swingers remain on Aux Glaize Creek near Brumley as well. Driving across them is an adventure as they rattle loudly and sway slightly. From Damming the Osage, page 75:
Some of Dice’s smaller spans cost as little as $1,000. His 1905 Tuscumbia project, perhaps the most difficult, required an 80-foot wooden tower to connect up with a 250-foot cliff across the 600-foot wide Osage. All were constructed from locally obtained materials except the #9 galvanized wire. He worked in the summer and fall when local men were busy with crops, so most of his bridge crews were boys.
Frightened cattle or overloaded trucks broke the decks of some and tornadoes wrecked others, but no Dice bridge ever structurally failed.
Joseph Dice died in 1947 and is buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Warsaw on a high hill overlooking the Osage, with a view of a distant Truman Dam.
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