In May of 1905, the bridge at Forest Avenue was a new one--and yet it was falling apart. Townspeople were so suspicious that someone painted graffiti on the abutments suggesting that the city had been ripped off.Conditions at the new Forest Avenue Bridge are getting worse all the time, and now some joker has printed in big letters on one of the abutments "Graft," "Boodle," which was the cause of considerable comment yesterday.
"The break in the southwest abutment has widened so much that were it not for the anchor it would topple over. The strain has been sufficient to crack the corner on which rests one of the main girders of the bridge. As far as the Daily Press knows no engineer has yet examined the structure, but to a layman it looks as if the anchor was not sufficient to hold the side wall together much longer.
"On the east side a crack has also appeared in the same part of the abutment as on the west side. Little can be done at present by the bridge company, as the water is too high, but persons using the bridge would like to see the approaches fixed up so that it would be a little more pleasant to drive over it. If the members of the bridge company could have heard the comments made by dozens of people that looked over the structure yesterday, they would not have been particularly elated."
--May 15, 1905 Ypsilanti Daily Press
