Was a man really buried inside a Mississippi River bridge? The legend is a true story. (2024)

Every time she crossed the Huey P. Long Bridge on U.S. 190, Mary Rogers' grandmother would pray the Rosary.

Then she would immediately make Rogers' grandfather, who usually was at the wheel, pull off at the end of the exit ramp to say a prayer for Jasper C. Brown.

That was Rogers' uncle, her grandmother's son. He died at age 19.

And like her grandparents, Rogers considers the Old Mississippi Bridge, as it's commonly known in Baton Rouge, as her late uncle's gravesite.

That's the quick answer to Adam Foster's inquiry as to whether there is truth to a story he's been told since childhood about a man being buried in the bridge.

"I remember hearing stories about flowers placed by the bridge," Foster wrote. "I know that there are similar stories about bridges in other cities, and some are urban legends. But is the Baton Rouge story true?"

Foster is right. These stories do circulate throughout the country. You can even find them in movies.

Go back and watch the 1977 disco classic, "Saturday Night Fever," and you'll find a scene where John Travolta's Tony tells his love interest about a worker buried in the concrete in the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge connecting Staten Island and Brooklyn.

The story made a good tall tale in the movie, but the story in Baton Rouge isn't fiction.

The Old Mississippi River Bridge opened in August 1940 and was the Capitol City's only bridge crossing the river until the Horace Wilkinson Bridge, commonly called the New Bridge, opened in 1968.

Work began on the Old Bridge in 1938. That's when Jasper Conrad Brown joined the work crew as a rigger. He lived in Fordoche, where his friends and family called him J.C.

In 1936, the Louisiana Legislature set aside $5.5 million and the Bureau of Public Roads added another $2.5 million for the project that would result in a truss cantilever bridge with a single train rail in the center. But Brown wouldn't live to see it.

The day was Feb. 10, 1938.

"He would have to go by boat out to the bridge," said Rogers, who lives in Baton Rouge. "I'm not sure what section they were working on, but they had poured concrete — this is my mom's version—on piling 13."

Brown and the other workers were required to wear steel-toe boots to anchor them on the bridge.

"They were wearing either steel-toe or some kind of leaded boots to keep them on the bridge because of the wind shear," Rogers said. "They were in a shift change, and my uncle was transferring from the bridge to the tugboat at the end of his shift when a huge gust of wind came and knocked him off the ladder."

Meanwhile, the concrete on piling 13 was still being poured. What happened next is unclear, but Rogers says witnesses say that Brown managed to fight his way to the surface three times while his crew tried throwing him a life ring buoy.

"After the third time, he was just sucked down," Rogers said. "Well, the divers entered the river, and they could see some kind of air bubbles where they had poured the concrete. So, they're assuming that he went into that piling. They never found a body."

Brown was Catholic. After the funeral service, there was no gravesite to bless, so the officiating priest led a procession to the unfinished bridge.

"They blessed the spot where my uncle fell in," Rogers said.

So, the bridge became Brown's gravesite, which is why his mother, Lottie Brown, would pray the Rosary each time she crossed. And while other families were cleaning graves and decorating them with flowers on All Saints Day, Lottie Brown placed flowers at the foot on the east side of the bridge for her son.

The story doesn't stop there.When the state Department of Highways— now the Department of Transportation and Development—learned of Lottie Brown's trips to the bridge, in the 1950s, they erected a plaque in memory of the nine men who were killed during the construction of the bridge.

In a 1991 interview with The Advocate, Rogers' mother, Dorothy Morales, said she believed the state was worried about her mother's safety.

"At the time, (Lottie Brown) was thinking more in terms of (a marker) on the bridge, but they placed it— I guess— where spectators wouldn't get hurt looking at it," Dorothy Morales said.

The plaque was attached to a Department of Highways building, on the east side of the Old Bridge, which was mostly unnoticed by traffic on U.S. 190.

The state later abandoned the building. A photo of the plaque appeared in a 2004 edition of The Advocate stating that it had been removed and was believed to be in the possession of the son of one of the deceased workers.

The other eight men who died while working to build the bridge are: Raymond A. Brien, James B. Brooks, William Buford, Claude F. Cochran, Thomas A. co*ckerham, William Eubanks Jr., Archie MacLeod and Rufus Rhymes.

Brown is the only worker whose body is believed to be buried in the bridge.

Dorothy Morales was only 14 years old when her brother died. In the 1991 article, she shared memories of her brother bringing their mother to the dentist and nearly fainting when their mother had two teeth extracted.

She also shared the memory of when a 10-year-old boy walked up to her in Fordoche and told her that someone had called his house to report the death of her brother. And she remembered how, the day before his death, J.C. Brown mailed his sweetheart in Erwinville a box of candy for Valentine's Day.

"He had also bought family members Valentine cards that weren't signed yet," she said in the 1991 interview. "To this day I think fondly of that holiday because of my brother."

Lottie Brown died in 1983, so Dorothy Morales continued her mother's tradition placing All Saints Day flowers at the foot of the east side of the bridge.

"I promised her I would as long as I could," Dorothy Morales said in 1991.

"My mother kept up the tradition of my grandmother until she had a stroke in 1997," Rogers said. "She was unable to go out there anymore. She died in 2013."

So, the tradition of the flowers ended, but the story of the man buried in the bridge lives on.