Downtown Poplar Bluff had dirt streets until 1906, when a mix of tar and gravel called macadam was laid down. It was an improvement, but not a great one — newspapers of the time published complaints of its brittleness and dirt.
“Poplar Bluff is no longer a small village and macadamized streets are not the proper thing for the great amount of traffic daily passing over them,” read the Weekly Citizen Democrat on April 14, 1911. “They are dusty, dirty and most unsatisfactory, and in a few years a block of macadam will cost more than a similar block of vitrified brick or asphalt.”
At this time, Poplar Bluff was indeed growing — a 1912 estimate put its population at about 6,916 people in a space 2.25 miles wide by 2 miles long. Plans to brick the streets over began as early as 1909 and ran concurrently with the digging of drainage ditches and plans for the Black River’s first flood gate, according to local historian Blanche Wolpers. She wrote “Bricks and Martyrs,” a history of downtown’s streets, for the Poplar Bluff Historical Preservation Commission in 1999.
Business owners funded the paving at $4.50 per foot in front of their properties. This cost included grading the street, layering them with concrete, sand, pitch and brick, and building the curb. The bid was awarded to a contractor named Roy Williams and later to Henry Hines Jolly.
Work went in fits and starts. Wolpers reported work began in 1910 but the project was put on hold until March 1912 due to cost. Things finally took off in May, when City Engineer Edward Thomes laid out a “paving district bordered by Second Street on the east; Vine Street on the north: Frisco Railroad tracks on the west and Ash Street on the south,” Wolpers wrote. This district encompassed Second, Main, Fourth, Vine, Poplar, Cedar, Maple, Cherry and Ash streets.
Funding woes were resolved, and the city council awarded the paving contract to Williams for $86,645.24 in the summer of 1912. The initial plan was to pave everything in a year, weather permitting, but instead, the process carried on until 1917.
Pine and Second streets were the first to be bricked.
Paving turned out to be more dramatic than might be expected. An October 1912 article titled “No Early Sleep” explained: “Contractor Williams is having to use dynamite to loosen the surface of Second Street [sic], preparatory to paving. Heavy charges are being used and the dirt and rocks are being thrown for a considerable distance. It is being handled so as to do no damage.”
Compared to the time a Confederate shell knocked in one wall of the Courthouse during the Civil War, the writer insisted “there was not near the disturbance that attends the placing of the big item of civic improvement.”
A much more dangerous explosion came a few months later. One December day, a foreman operating an asphalt kettle near Second and Cedar streets left his post without turning off the machine. A fire resulted, then an explosion which sent shrapnel into a foreman.
“Before extinguished, probably 20-foot of damage was done,” an article in Gibbs’ research stated. “And in fighting the fire with a chemical fire extinguisher TW Darnell, one of the foremen on the street job, suffered a serious injury when the machine exploded.”
Darnell survived with serious injuries to his arm and scalp, and apparently recovered. Despite the near-tragedy, progress continued at a rate of around a block a day.
“Roy Williams completed his contract in April 1913 and moved on to pave streets in Cairo,” Wolpers reported. “Meanwhile, according to a newspaper story in March 1913, the city council voted to extend the paving of Main Street to Gardner Street, Vine was extended to Tenth, Pine to Eighth Street and other revisions were made.”
It is uncertain when Williams actually left. Various reports from later in the year note him receiving shipments of bricks and bricking residential streets once the business district was complete. When he did depart, one of the contractors taking over his work was Jolly, who also constructed the city flood gate. To Gibbs’ amusement, The Citizen Democrat published multiple complaints about Jolly including delays and subpar workmanship. A 1919 article said, “a motion prevailed notify HH Jolly that the paving on Broadway and Ninth was not up to contract and the streets be repaired at the contractor’s expense.”
Jolly passed away in 1921 at the age of 75, leaving his legacy bricked into Poplar Bluff and archived in print.