Saturday, March 17, 1945, traffic drove across the Black Hawk Bridge at Lansing and the nearly three-mile dike between Iowa and Wisconsin much like it had done for the previous dozen years for jobs, school, shopping, entertainment, dating and all the other pastimes of busy lives. The next day that vital link over the Mississippi River would close for a decade.
Helping to break up ice on the river, the Coast Guard cutter Fern had passed Lansing on its way up the river the previous Thursday. The highest water in 25 years was predicted for that weekend, and by Sunday, March 18, the high water had arrived, pushing the broken, foot-thick chunks of ice under - and into - the dike bridges. The Big Slough and Winneshiek Slough bridges along the dike gave way that day, cutting off that traffic route between Wisconsin and Iowa.