Arch Creek Natural Bridge
played a big part in my life during the ages of 13 and 14. This bridge was a natural limestone formation spanning 40 feet (or 60 feet depending on the narrator) across a creek that was once pristine but had grown muddy brown before my arrival on the scene in January of 1950. The creek was full of ugly garfish and other creatures, though I have to admit that I don't remember seeing alligators in it. Which is surprising since they seem to be everywhere now. The bridge is located in North Miami, Florida and is presently a Miami-Dade County park. But at that time it was simply a rarely traveled, very secluded, narrow, paved road that crossed over the natural limestone formation, and entered Sea Breeze Trailer Park in which we had lived since our arrival from Michigan. (The natural bridge collapsed in 1973 and a replica has since been rebuilt.)
Living in a trailer, in that large park, was environmentally challenging. Though the trailer park was full of oak trees dripping with Spanish moss which made for shaded days and pitch dark nights, vicious biting no-seeums, billions of hungry mosquitoes, heat and humidity, mildew and mold, hurricanes, cockroaches, etc. were just some of the things we had to quickly become accustomed to. There was a dense jungle bordering two sides of the park into which we kids never ventured. There was no place we had not fearlessly ventured back in Michigan but somehow we used our common sense and stayed away from this tightly tangled jungle. Maybe the hobo camps (trains ran through it), poisonous snakes, and rumors of quicksand stymied any desire for exploration. Arch Creek flowed from the jungle, basked briefly in the sunlight, ducked under the bridge, another blast of sunlight, then disappeared back into the jungle.
My friends and I spent countless hours hanging out on the bridge talking and laughing. Friend Gail told me her father used to swim there when he was young and the water had been clear all the way to the sandy bottom. That was so hard to believe as one could not see an inch below the muddied surface.
One evening along suppertime, Gail's eight year old brother Boots turned up missing. We all began looking for him and someone noticed a thick rope that was tied to a branch of an old oak along the creek's edge was now dangling out over the water. The police were informed and they prepared to drag the creek. As a respectful spectator crowd with front row seats, we perched silently on the metal railing of the bridge and watched them in their small boats dragging a large lethal looking five-pronged hook relentlessly along the bottom, while we listened to the mournful incessant calls of the whip-poor-wills long into the night. We finally tired and wandered off to our separate homes and left the police to their grisly task. By early morning we had heard they found Boots upright, the top of his head merely a foot beneath the surface of the water, directly under where we had been sitting, buried nearly to his hips in mud and silt and with a broken leg. We never knew what happened to him but there was a guess that he had been hit by a car and someone had thrown him over the side.
A week or so after that on a bright sunny afternoon I took a walk alone to the river. I suppose I was in a melancholy mood, not particularly depressed, maybe just sad about poor sweet Boots. I stood on the bridge looking over the railing at the nasty murky water and noticed just over the ledge there sat a huge ugly red necked turkey vulture. He seemed to be napping as he did not appear to notice me only inches from him. After a while, for reasons I do not know, I left the bridge and walked around to the edge of the creek itself. I stood on the high bank next to the vulture and continued to stare down into the water. I moved closer until my toes were a bit over the edge of the limestone that lined the creek bank and watched the water slowly flowing down below. I closed my eyes knowing that if I lost my balance I would never climb back out of the water. I don't know how long I stood there but I did not lose my balance and of course I did not jump or I would not be telling this tale.
This is but a taste of my experience with the historic Arch Creek Natural Bridge.
