Creeks named Beaver are like uncles named Randy. Everybody can vaguely remember at least one. In my teen years, I lived close to a street named Beaver Creek, which is like saying I lived in a part of America where people drank soda and drove around in cars.
In post-industrial America, it's hard to believe that empires were built on beaver pelts. Today, "information" and maybe fentanyl are the hamsters in the wheel of commerce -- people shell out for stress, then to forget. But back in the day you made mogul bank off the fur trade. The Astors of Manhattan were so flush with beaver cheese there are still tiles commemorating the critters in the Astor Place subway station.
As beaver-based capitalism boomed into the 20th century, development crept outward from the Astor Places into the hinterlands back to the now largely beaverless Beaver Creeks that once furnished the furry currency that financed the fancy towers on FiDi's Beaver Street.
Humans stepped in to build bridges and the material embodiments of beaver dreams.
Even the placid little Beaver Creek that flows through a bison-trod limestone canyon in Wind Cave National Park got a bridge, and a nice one to boot.
"One of the significant accomplishments of the builders of the bridge," says the Wind Cave website, "was to create the illusion that the concrete arches rise naturally from the rock walls on opposite sides of the canyon."
Built in 1929, the one-lane bridge is a photogenic intervention in the natural landscape. Looking at the bridge from the road, you might wonder what it was like to live in a time when people built things -- beautiful things that not just the financiers and engineers but the workers could be proud of.
My generation built "nations" -- we signed up to watch our friends die maintaining overseas prep schools for officers in training for lucrative board of directors positions at weapons manufacturers. When the nations were "built" they were handed back to local rulers who like our own build nothing, preferring destruction as proof of their pedigree and moral certitude.
That's the human legacy your Outdoor Correspondent's kids will inherit.
Hopefully they'll look further back to the builders. All of civilization is complicated -- everything is built on fur and blood. To build without a vision like our leaders do abroad would betray the namesakes of a thousand creeks whose pelts paid for our infrastructure. Fortunately, the Beaver Creek Bridge builders had a vision that honors their sacrifice.
If the bridge fails, they can look back further still.
In Leo Lionni's "Tico and the Golden Wings," wingless Tico wishes for a pair of golden wings, but when the wishingbird indulges him he finds himself estranged from his jealous friends. He gives his golden feathers to the needy, growing black feathers in their place. Accepted back into bird society, Tico realizes he's still not the same. "We are all different," he says. "Each for his own memories, and his own invisible golden dreams."
Beaver Creeks share a name and a dam history but each has its own riparian identity. Each etches a singular course through the land. This Beaver Creek cuts tunnels through the canyon, flowing in levels like Manhattan's FDR. At a spot along the Centennial Trail, the hiker can peek through a cave-like opening at a Styxian twin flowing under Upper Beaver Creek.
On the cliffs above, wind and water formed a geologic model for the Beaver Creek Bridge.
The nation building era is over and this "information" age will whimper off into oblivion eventually.
Even if it all crumbles down and the beavers take their creeks back, people will build again. Before there were cathedrals there were Cathedral Spires. Before the Beaver Creek Bridge, the creek and beavers built. Every Beaver Creek is fecund with architectures like invisible golden dreams or something.