A very long bridge that made much needed connections but in ways that can be terrifying for some people is the subject of today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp issued on June 25, 1958. The stamp shows Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge, which spans the Straits of Mackinac and connects Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas.

The bridge’s name (and the name of the region) apparently are the English version of the French version of Michilimackinac, the word that Native Americans used to describe the region. (That word may or may not have meant the Great Turtle, which may have referred to the shape of what is now called Mackinac Island.)

Proposals for a bridge in the area date back to the 1880s when a local businessmen inspired by the new Brooklyn Bridge suggested a similar span. However, nothing came of those plans and for almost 100 years rail cars and later automobiles either crossed the channel by ferry or drove all the way around Lake Michigan and through Wisconsin to get to the other side. Finally, in the 1950s, the state of Michigan created an authority charged with building a self-financed toll bridge in the straits.

Opened in 1957, but officially dedicated on June 25, 1958, the bridge (often called “Big Mac” and “Mighty Mac”) traverses 5 miles and sits 200 feet above the windswept waters of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. The bridge’s 3,800-foot main span (the part between the two towers) is the 3rd longest span on a US suspension bridge (behind the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge) and the 24th longest such span in the world. The bridge cost about $100 million (about $2.6 billion in today’s dollars).

The bridge was designed by David Steinman, a well-known civil engineer who also was a writer and poet. In designing the bridge Steinman – who once wrote, “a bridge is a poem stretched across a river, a symphony of stone and steel” – drew on lessons he took from the failure of the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which, in 1940, collapsed in high winds. Three years after that disaster, he published a theoretical analysis of suspension-bridge stability problems, which recommended that future bridge designs include deep stiffening trusses to support the bridge deck and an open-grid roadway to reduce its wind resistance.

Steinman incorporated both features into the design of the Mackinac Bridge. The stiffening truss is open to reduce wind resistance. The road deck is shaped as an airfoil to provide lift in a cross wind, and the center two lanes are open grid to allow vertical (upward) air flow, which fairly precisely cancels the lift. All these features, however, do mean that during high winds, the road deck can move up to 35 feet from side to side. Because of its height and length, some drivers find it very difficult to cross the bridge. To help those people, the Mackinac Bridge Authority has a free Drivers Assistance Program that provides drivers for those who prefer to have someone else drive across the span. More than 1,000 people a year use the service, which currently is suspended because of the COVID pandemic.

Not surprisingly, the fears and the program make me thing of Nachman of Bratslov’s famous admonition: “Kol ha’olam kulo gesher tzar me’od, veha’ikar lo le’fached klal” – in English: “All the world is a very narrow bridge, and the most important thing is not to be overwhelmed by fear” (or as Rabbi Darby Leigh has taught, to “not make yourself afraid”). It’s good advice at any time but seems particularly timely in these turbulent times.

Be well, stay safe, work for justice and fight for peace.