Like many people, I was dismayed when I learned that the Dewey Bridge that spanned the Colorado River in eastern Utah had been destroyed by fire April 6. Judy and I tried to recall the first time we crossed the bridge, sometime in the 1970s.

I also recalled my days as a cowboy, pushing cattle to the bridge.

Perhaps that’s stretching things a weeee bit. I was actually a journalist, acting in temporary cowboy capacity, to get a story.

This occurred in the mid-1980s, when I was assigned by a Daily Sentinel editor to do one of those “disappearing scenes from the Old West” articles. A ranching family was moving its cattle from Castle Valley area, up Utah Higway 128, to the Dewey Bridge where corrals could hold them until trucks came to haul them away.

Since I was one of the few members of the Sentinel news staff familiar with saddles and horseflesh, I got the assignment. (Tough job, but somebody had to do it.)

I remained mostly at the back of the herd, chased a few strays when they wandered too far into the sagebrush away from the highway, and generally tried to stay out of the way of the real cowboys and cowgirls.

We slowed traffic on the highway for several hours, until we finally reached the bridge and pushed the cattle across — on what was then the brand-new paved bridge just upstream from the old wooden suspension bridge. But we did take some time that day to inspect the old bridge and wonder what it would be like to get a herd of nervous cattle over that structure.

Others have their own memories of the Dewey Bridge. The photograph on this page was supplied by Ron Phillips, of Centennial, who said it was taken in 1979, while he was towing a boat across the bridge. The mirrors on his truck and sides of the boat barely cleared the bridge timbers.

“I started going to that area in the 1960s and I must have crossed that bridge 15 times,” Phillips told me. “It’s such a waste that it was burned down.”

Now residents of Grand County, Utah, are hoping to rebuild the bridge, a project that’s estimated to cost between $500,000 and $1 million. The Grand County Council has approved the effort, if it is not too expensive, and the Grand County Historic Preservation Commission is set to lead the project.

I have written before on these pages that not every historic building and structure deserves preservation. Some are simply too far gone, and were of such little historic importance in to begin with, that there is little good reason to spend public money to preserve them. (Private benefactors are welcome to preserve whatever historic buildings they desire.)

The Dewey Bridge doesn’t fit into that category. It was a critical transportation link between Moab and western Colorado for much of the 21st century. And, based on initial reports, much of the original structure remains relatively undamaged by the April fire. The restoration won’t mean building a complete replica of the original.

Although restoring the bridge is a Utah project, people in Colorado who traveled over the Dewey Bridge — or, more recently — passed by it, and remember it fondly should support the effort to rebuild it.

That includes journalists who occasionally pretend to be cowboys.

Colorado Springs state Rep. Douglas Bruce was raising a ruckus again last week regarding a bill to allow more legal immigrants to Colorado as farm workers. After once being warned by Committee Chairwoman Rep. Kathleen Curry of Gunnison for making comments attacking foreigners, Bruce said, “I don’t think we need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in Colorado.”

That prompted Curry to revoke Bruce’s speaking privileges with respect to that bill. For her efforts, she has received threats from vehemently anti-immigration individuals, and she has requested State Patrol protection.

Even so, Curry did the right thing.

First, Bruce was blatantly wrong. While many of those who come to the United States illegally may indeed be peasants — in the sense they are from poor, agricultural areas — they are certainly not illiterate. Mexico’s overall literacy rate is well above 90 percent. Those who come here illegally from Mexico may not speak English, but that doesn’t mean they are illiterate.

More importantly, Bruce’s comments appeared designed to provoke anger from supporters of the bill, not to further debate on the issue, especially since he had already been told once to keep his attack language in check.

Committee chairmen have a right to establish acceptable standards of civility within their committees. Curry believed Bruce had breached hers and demanded he stop. That doesn’t mean she violated his First Amendment rights. Bruce was free to go outside and make his comments to newspaper reporters or proclaim them from street corners.

Last week’s dust-up doesn’t quite rank up there with Bruce’s antics his first day on the job, when he kicked a newspaper photographer who was snapping his picture. Bruce was rightfully censured for that incident, but there will apparently be no additional sanctions for his “illiterate peasant” comments.

That’s fine. The ultimate sanction for Bruce could come at the ballot box this year — if voters in El Paso County are as embarrassed by his antics as the rest of Coloradans are.