Vern Mesler is organizing a Lansing Community College (LCC) conference he expects will bring national interest and pump dollars into the local economy.
Armed with a $25,000 matching grant from the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, he hopes 90 preservationists will be in the Capital region for the first day of the three-day conference next March. Participants will learn how to restore old bridges as well as other metal objects.
“Historic wrought iron and steel truss bridges that were fabricated between 1850 and 1950 are rapidly being replaced today with new concrete or steel bridges,” Mesler says.
While modern transportation standards preclude heavy-vehicle use of the old bridges, they can be re-used for pedestrian trail bridges, but many are being scrapped because people don’t know how to work with the old materials, he says.
Mesler, 70, is a retired steel fabricator who can show them. He worked for Douglas Steel for decades and now teaches welding at LCC. He consults on the Historic Bridge Park of Calhoun County, near Marshall. Five bridges there are already restored. Eight more await restoration and placement in the developing Calhoun County Alliance Trailway.
The old bridges are held together with rivets. Placing them is an art “that is dead—buried with the pyramids,” Mesler says. He teaches the skills to replace the old metal pieces, and has taught workshops around the country, most recently for the Texas Department of Transportation.
He’s not an engineer but a craftsman. It’s not the design of the bridge that excites him but rather the materials used to build it.
“Every one of those parts tells a story—how it was made, who made it.”
Source: Vern Mesler, Lansing Community College
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation & Jobs editor, may be reached here.
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