In 1854, the new Mosinee post office building
moved from the east side of the Wisconsin River
to the west side. The first settlers had settled on
the eastern side, along the major road that
connected Mosinee to the wider world. But
the geography of the area limited expansion
along the eastern riverbank. By the late 1850s,
the growing community would largely build
new homes and businesses on the other side
of Little Bull Island.
This also meant that even more than other
communities along the Wisconsin River Valley,
Mosinee would need a good bridge to cross at
the Little Bull Falls. The lumberjacks had long
known the swift rapids and rocky sections of
Little Bull Falls made it the most dangerous
place on the whole Wisconsin River.
Mosinee’s first real bridges were wooden, held
together with a few iron bolts. They were built
with latticework-style walls and open at the top.
The wooden bridges crossed in sections; first to the
island over the eastern “jaws of the gorge,” then
over to the western side further down the island.
Over the years, new bridges crossing the gorge
were built to replace the old covered bridge.
By the turn of the century, steel truss bridges
had replaced the old wooden ones. In the 1930s,
Mosinee got a new “super bridge” made of
concrete and steel.
The building of the paper factory on the site of
the old sawmill led the Village of Mosinee to
quickly develop and expand in the first half of the
20th century. With the greater importance of
automobiles and the highways, it became clear
that a modern bridge was needed to handle the
larger volume of traffic passing through town.
The current bridge arrangement, bringing traffic
directly across the Wisconsin River, came with a
modern bridge built in 1963
