Terry Poindexter Post on Facebook Shared to me from Tyler Cumpton
Terry Poindexter
This was my Mother's Uncle, my great uncle, Sandy Silvers.
In 1927 road construction crews began a new highway, U.S. 71, between Butler and Rich Hill, MO. About three miles of the road crossed low land between two major streams. The year after the new road was built, the area received record amounts of rainfall, and the bottom land flooded, covering the new road. The water was between 6 inches and a foot deep, yet essentially stopped traffic.
The water was deep enough to make the new road invisible to drivers. A farmer living nearby, Sandy Silvers, saw an opportunity. He shod the front feet of his horses, loaded chains and ropes in a wagon, and headed to the flooded road. For one dollar a car, he offered to guide motorists along the portion of the flooded new highway to high ground. He tied the cars together behind his wagon, sometimes as many as eight or ten at a time. Silvers relied on the click of the horseshoes on the pavement to keep the horses walking on the invisible road. When he finished guiding a string of cars through the flooded stretch, he usually found another string waiting to be guided the other direction. As long as the road remained flooded, Silvers worked twenty-four hours a day, stopping only long enough to feed his horses and nap when the traffic let up.
