Larry Richardson Wednesday on the 150-foot-long model of the Golden Gate Bridge that he built over a creek on his property in Mulvane, Kan.
By A. G. SULZBERGER
Published: September 15, 2010
MULVANE, Kan. — There is no obvious reason Larry Richardson would want to cross Cowskin Creek, a muddy rivulet that winds through the croplands here, much less why he would want to cross it with a self-designed replica of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The Golden Gate Bridge has been a lifelong inspiration for Larry Richardson.
But that is what Mr. Richardson has done, connecting his property to an undevelopable sliver of weed-choked wasteland across the creek using salvaged materials, family labor and nearly $5,000 of his own money, much to the chagrin of his wife.
“We didn’t have any blueprints or anything like that,” Mr. Richardson, a retired postman, said recently while standing in the middle of the span as it swayed under the steady assault of plains winds. “We just used a postcard and tried to make it look like it should.”
And for nearly a decade now, where a couple of cottonwood trees used to stand, this bridge has served as a Midwest monument to dreams of distant places.
From its home at the dead end of a dirt road lined on one side with an amber field of corn and on the other with the green expanse of ripening soybeans, the bridge has become a modest tourist draw to Mulvane, a town of about 6,000 a half-hour south of Wichita and almost equally distant from the Atlantic as it is from the Pacific.
Next year, as the real Golden Gate prepares for its 75th anniversary, the Richardson replica will celebrate its 10th. For the occasion Mr. Richardson, 62, plans to apply a fresh coat of metallic paint, “to get it back to its goldness.”
In a region where the landscape is often described as subtle or, less generously, dull, a number of small towns boast novelty attractions like this — the giant ball of twine in Cawker City, Kan.; the celebrated Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D.; and “Carhenge,” in Alliance, Neb., where old autos have been perched unnaturally to mimic Stonehenge. Such lighthearted feats of engineering are best approached with a mix of good humor (that is one big ball of twine!) and admiration for the ingenuity involved (who knew that corn cobs could be used as siding?).
In that tradition, the Richardson bridge (at 1414 North Peaceful Lane) has received a steady stream of visitors since its opening, including private tour buses from out of town, groups from the local nursing home, and, shortly after it was finished, a crew from the “Today” show.
“It’s just something different,” said Barbara Richardson, 60, Mr. Richardson’s wife. “It gives people something to look at in our flat state.”
From start to finish it took about 11 years to build. Like its model, the crossing is a suspension bridge; the main cables are bowed into a soft crescent from the tug of hundreds of smaller cables that hold the weight of the deck. Not that anyone would confuse the two. At about 150 feet long and 15 feet from the slow-moving water below, the bridge is a small fraction of the size of the real Golden Gate, one of America’s landmark structures. That one has to be repainted almost continuously to maintain its luster.
(In truth, the Richardson bridge is not even the most substantial look-alike — that title goes to the 25th of April Bridge in Lisbon, according to Kevin Starr, author of “Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Bridge.”)
But for many of the visitors, and even the Richardsons themselves, the spectacle offers an escape — the chance to imagine themselves in a place that geographic and financial realities have kept distant from them. “This gives them at least a local Golden Gate Bridge they can claim they’ve been to,” said Lee Richardson, 58, a younger brother who helped with the project.
Mr. Richardson himself has spent much of his life thinking about the Golden Gate from afar. He had wanted to see it so badly that he told his high school sweetheart (and future wife) that he would not consider marriage till he saw it in person. That happened soon enough, as he was driven across it in an Army bus, at night, en route to a deployment to Vietnam.
“Needless to say, it was the biggest bridge I’ve ever been on,” he said. “It was just fascinating. But to be honest with you, I would have loved to walk across it to get a look at the detail.”
After the military, Mr. Richardson returned to Kansas and married, later moving to the property where his family used to run a farm. The land had long since been subdivided and sold off. But a section of his lot lay on the far side of the creek, overgrown with poison ivy and thick with mosquitoes. He decided to build a bridge to it anyway. He eventually put a bench there, where he can sit and admire his handiwork.
Mr. Richardson has not been back to the actual Golden Gate. His wife has never seen it, though she would like to go. They have a photo of it somewhere, he said, but they cannot find it. It looks, they said, pretty much like a bigger version of the bridge out back.
Among the recent sightseers was Clara Thompson, 80, who has visited three or four times. “It was just marvelous,” Ms. Thompson said last week from the Mulvane Senior Citizen Center. “You just want to take people to look at it.”
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