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Long before I drove on or knew anything about Seven Bridges Road in Duluth, an artist client preferred to trade one of his impressionist paintings of a bridge there instead of cash for a first meeting. A photo is below. I don’t recall if he ever came back, but I walk past the 13” by 16” painting every day on the way into our kitchen.
Research led me to the instigator of that road, Samuel Snively, later longest serving Mayor of Duluth. I never knew any real person had that name, only Snively Whiplash, the cartoon villain contesting with Dudley Do-Right on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show of the early 60’s. Did we not all aim to be Dudley?
Farther down the Road’s memory lane, I learned that the Bridges of that song’s title are in Montgomery, Alabama, not Duluth. And… Bob Dylan did not write it; outlaw country singer Steve Young did in 1969. It has since been covered by nearly every artist you have heard of as late as 2017. The commenters say the Eagles’ 1980 live album with that song is the best. To be sure, I will have to listen to it and the Joan Baez/Jeffrey Shurtleff duet from 1970.
1921 map showing Amity Parkway, which later became known as Seven Bridges Road.
For the few who have not heard some version of the poetry, here it is, punctuation added:
There are stars in the southern sky/Southward as you go.
There is moonlight and moss in the trees/Down the Seven Bridges Road.
Now I have loved you like a baby/Like some lonesome child.
And I have loved you in a tame way/And I have loved you wild.
Sometimes there’s a part of me/Has to turn from here and go,
Running like a child from these warm stars/Down the Seven Bridges Road.
There are stars in the southern sky/And if ever you decide you should go,
Steve Aldrich took this painting of a bridge instead of payment of cash for a meeting with a client. Photo courtesy of Steve Aldrich
There is a taste of time sweetened honey?/Down the Seven Bridges Road.
Had I read the first line of the lyrics sooner, or ever heard the song before 2021, I might have been spared wrongly believing Dylan wrote it about his Duluth. [Pause] Having now listened to the versions of the Eagles and Baez, I don’t like the heavy orchestration of a love song. The melody gets hidden. I loved the video with Baez on YouTube, and the poetry remains compelling,
Back to Duluth and some geography, the Seven Bridges Road there is a four-mile portion of the Skyline Parkway. It runs parallel, and over and over, Amity Creek as it plunges 400 feet to Lake Superior. (Amity Creek is the western branch of the Lester River.) One writer says the best access to the Road is by turning north (on Occidental Avenue) just west of the Lester River in East Duluth. It crosses Hawk Ridge and ends at Glenwood Avenue. It’s first name was Amity Road, but got bound up in the bridges, originally wooden, and then replaced by current stone ones in the early 1900’s. Northern Wilds says that four of the original stone bridges remain. There are a series of marvelous bridge pictures at The Seven Bridges Road, Duluth, MN (johnweeks.com). More great pictures are at Take A Beautiful Drive Down Seven Bridges Road In Duluth, Minnesota (onlyinyourstate.com)
At weblink www.amitycreek.com/sevenbridges, you can find Mark Ryan’s History of the Seven Bridges Road, “Samuel Snively and the Building of a Northern Minnesota Parkway. I will read it and may return in another column. In the meantime, here is a map from that writing:
A Snively quote provides a good Coda;
“It was a very costly and difficult road to build, for amid the dead and down timber the brush and trees had grown and there were many trees and stumps all difficult of removal, and the nature of the creek demanded long and high bridges and there was also the important feature of building the road to assure the best scenic and park development without regard to the ease of construction.”
We now know that Snively Road was not named after Whiplash….
Steve Aldrich is a retired Hennepin County lawyer, mediator, and Judge, serving from 1997-2010. He and his wife moved here in 2016. He likes to remember that he was a Minnesota Super Lawyer before being elected to the bench. Now he is among the most vulnerable to viruses but fully vaccinated. Steve really enjoys doing weddings, the one thing a retired judge can do without appointment by the Chief Justice. He officiated at a well-masked wedding this year where the “congregation” was in Grand Marais, Norway, and White Bear Lake.
Copyright Stephen C. Aldrich and News-Herald, 2021.
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