The day had to come.

Chapel Bridge, the unique little iron structure that has carried traffic over Sugar Creek between Milford and Stockland for a century or more, had to close.

The day came Friday, when truck loads of gravel were dumped in the road on each side of the bridge to bar traffic. The orange and white "ROAD CLOSED" signs might not have been deterrent enough for rural Iroquois County adventurers.

The last ride over the bridge came after engineering inspectors whacked a couple holes in its underpinning — ironically "a semi crossed it the day after they put the hammer through it," county engineer Joel Moore said of the historic structure.

Chapel Bridge is not just old. It was built from girders salvaged from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. That will assure that it continues to stand for a while. In recent years, Illinois has protected such artifacts from simply being demolished and replaced — at least when "adverse travel" around the structure is less than five miles, as is the case at this site next to Sugar Creek Chapel and Cemetery.

Chapel Bridge was long thought to have to have been built from girders from the world's first Ferris Wheel, which drew huge crowds at that 1893 World's Fair and again in 1904 at the Louisiana Exposition in St. Louis. However it was dynamited on May 11, 1906 and sold for scrap.

In addition, photos of the original Ferris Wheel show that it contained no arched girders.

Research has shown that the unusual arches of the Sugar Creek bridge were originally dome supports of the administration building of the Columbian Exposition.

So, it's historic status is secure — whether the bridge is or not.

Unless it has the good grace to simply collapse in its old age — as the old iron Iroquois River bridge at L'Erable did in February, 2005 — Iroquois County's options are limited.

The bridge could be moved — if anyone is willing to take on the costly project of tearing it down and rebuilding it at another site.

A separate structure could be built near it, necessitating expensive construction of new roadway.

It could be rehabilitated — but Moore said he had received a telephone estimate that the rebuilding job could cost a minimum of $400,0000.

"A lot of people would like to preserve it and I'm one of them," Moore said, "but we don't have the money."

And, $400,000 may be just a start. A similar arched structure, Dunns Bridge over the Kankakee River, northeast of Wheatfield, Ind., also is linked in legend withGeorge Ferris' first famed wheel. Again, the arched supports, are thought to have come from a building — the Indiana Exposition Building at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis.

Dunns Bridge has been beautifully restored, but at a cost of about $500,000 in 2002, mostly in state and federal grants.

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