Hazelwood residents’ battle for Glenwood Bridge

Signs on the old Glenwood Bridge warned motorists to drive slowly and not to throw lighted cigarettes on its wooden deck.

A truck lumbers across the splintered wooden deck of the old Glenwood Bridge in June of 1966.

After vandals tore up some of the Glenwood Bridge’s wooden decking, city police superintendent James Slussed ordered the span closed to motorists and pedestrians.

In 1967, the Glenwood Bridge closed for a weekend while workers applied a non-skid surface to the steel panels on the bridge deck.

In the summer of 1964, Charles Frederick took up his post in a lawn chair to enforce Glenwood Bridge barricades as part of a protest staged by Hazelwood citizens.

One sign on the span said “Slow Travel At Own Risk. ” Another warned motorists not to toss cigarettes on the wooden bridge.

Construction of a new Glenwood Bridge had begun in 1960 but was moving at a glacial pace.

After vandals tore up the 70-year-old bridge’s wooden deck, city police Superintendent James Slusser inspected it and ordered it closed to motorists and pedestrians on July 30, 1964.

Hazelwood citizens, who were fed up with having their tires punctured on the bridge, seized the moment and staged a protest that lasted for three days.

About a dozen Hazelwood residents, most of them women, set up barricades at both ends of the bridge and took turns around the clock staffing the blockade to make their point.

Afterward, the state spent two months repairing the bridge before reopening it to traffic in November 1964.

Four years later, residents of Hazelwood, Hays and the South Hills received an early Christmas present when the new Glenwood Bridge opened to traffic on Dec. 20, 1968. The new bridge cost $18 million.