Why does Oak Leaf Trail bridge look like it was built for cars?
Observant users of the Oak Leaf Trail in Greenfield may have noticed something a bit odd near where the trail crosses the Root River between Highway 100 and South 106th Street.
There’s a bike and pedestrian bridge that crosses the Root River in that location. Nothing amiss there.
But there’s another bridge, just to the east, that crosses, well, not much of anything. It’s quite robust, almost as if it were built for cars.
That’s because it was.
We’ll get to that, but let’s back up first.
Why ‘in the middle of a field’?
A reader posed the bridge question to What the Wisconsin? — where reporters take on questions about our state, our communities and the people in them.
Jerry Gazinski of Pewaukee said in the 1960s, when he was young, a bridge was “built in the middle of a field” in Greenfield east of Highway 100.
“I have always wondered why this bridge was built without a road leading to it,” Gazinski said. “It is just a bridge in the middle of a field, and it is there to this day.”
Some initial checking revealed that the bridge is indeed still there, and it’s currently utilized by the Oak Leaf Trail, which goes over it.
The bridge is wide, with raised sidewalks and wooden guardrails along each side.
But why was it built, many years before the Oak Leaf Trail was constructed there, and seemingly designed for cars and trucks, not bikers and pedestrians?
Greenfield Mayor Michael Neitzke didn’t know the answer offhand. Neither did the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, which said it didn’t have much info because it’s not on a state highway.
The Wisconsin Historical Society and Milwaukee County Historical Society also had little information about the span.
But Milwaukee County Parks, which oversees the Oak Leaf Trail, finally had the answer.
Root River Parkway extension
The land was acquired by the parks department in 1960 and the bridge was constructed around 1970, said Sarah Toomsen, Milwaukee County Parks manager of planning and development.
Toomsen said “a little bit of investigation” at the Parks Administration Office turned up Oct. 26, 1970, correspondence between the Milwaukee County Park Commission and the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage Commission that referenced plans to have the Root River Parkway run between Cold Spring Road and 108th Street.
The letter talks about two sets of plans, one for “Root River Parkway Drive from West Cold Spring Road to South 108th Street,” and the other for the Root River Parkway bridge.
“The bridge has been built,” the letter states.
Presumably the plan would have entailed rerouting the Root River to flow under the newly constructed bridge. But that never happened.
The parkway currently ends at Layton Avenue, a bit farther to the south.
Why the road project was abandoned isn’t known.
Oak Leaf Trail made use of bridge
Milwaukee County Parks constructed
the Oak Leaf Trail through the area in the late 1980s, including building the smaller bike and pedestrian bridge that goes over the Root River just to the west of the bigger bridge, Toomsen said.
Toomsen surmised that it would have made sense to route the Oak Leaf Trail over the big bridge when the trail was put in.
“My guess is that the alignment of the bridge existed, and the trail was therefore lined up with it when it was developed,” she said.
For Neitzke, mayor and longtime Greenfield resident, the backstory of the bridge was welcome information.
“I never knew,” Neitzke said in an email. “It’s a great bit of history.”