The new bridge then in post card greetings

Available on ebay for a limited time, this great RPPC post card is up for auction.  The last really neat post card with the old Lake Menomin sold for an astounding $77.00!

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Well today's post card is already reaching a fairly high price, considering this was likely sold by the box load through the old Lee Drug Store alone (Menomonie residents will remember the racks just inside the door that were there well through the 1990's and into the 2000's).   Of course this author thought these post cards were really cool then but with the deeper contextual Menomonie history knowledge (that this author has now) the pictures were still rather left self-interpretive.   Such as, "oh, this used to be a street here." vs.  "UW Stout has been constantly expanding and Bowman hall is the oldest building in 1897 and there used to be more Main Street buildings where that parking lot is south from Penco but they burned down along with the previous Stout manual training school building and then ....." 

You get the idea, there's a massive story behind it all with a lot of people spread through decades but we package things into the smallest most efficient package and the evolution of a "car-free" campus and the expansion of campus takes a long time to learn and communicate.   Who has that time to care about the city they live in these days?

Nowhere in the UW Stout history yarns is the mention of the pressure it has put on the city of Menomonie and the amount of traffic and parking lot spaces along with undesirable home owner occupied neighborhoods, but that's an "outside the bay" topic we'll cover in the future.  

But back to the post card.

What makes this RPPC really interesting is that the back description actually gives a huge clue as to what year this photo was taken.

"Lake Menomin as seen from Hwy. 12 on the south bank of lake. Girl's Stout dormitory and new bridge can be seen be seen across lake from this scenic paradise."

That handwritten note with "7-21-62" adds massive value to this post card.   People usually don't put foward dates on this type of thing, but stranger things....

Menomonie was notoriously known for crooked bridges and that 1942 bridge is a nice publicity feature.   Something we all really take for granted in the current day.   If it were possible to get a better view of the Parker Pen area behind the bridge, that would add more value to this picture.

Well, we know that the girls dormitory was Bertha Tainter Hall and that building was replaced by the Modern Jeter-Tainter-Callahan  in the mid-50's.   And of course this is still just "Stout State College" at this point in history.

The Jeter and Callahan "wings" were added in 1958 to the center Tainter Hall.  This is another clue as to an exact year this was taken.

This could also be a nice "look at our new brand new big lake" picture.   The water level relative to the bridge and the seemingly not there private boathouse near the old pump house could put this picture right into 1958 or 1959 with that very tidy looking rip-rap running along the shore.   Or even into 1961.

It doesn't appear that the old steel truss bridge is running under the new bridge, but it is such an obscured area off in the distance.

What's even more fun is that we could probably find someone that knew who these people were at the picnic table.

Of course it is a misleading photo to those of us today.  It would seem to suggest more space, peace quiet, nature, etc.   But those of use who live in Menomonie know it is a very traffic heavy road with vehicles routinely exceeding speed limits.  

This scene is very possible to recreate today, but not when UW Stout is in session or Monday through Friday for the most part.   The sit down passive park has become a drive-by location.   For the price, this author can't justify the higher bid value at present without a better shoreline background detail available.