Durango High School student Hunter Osborn’s bridge design was chosen to be built and placed in the Durango Public Library’s Youth Literary Garden as part of a partnership between the Kiwanis Club of Durango and the Durango Botanic Gardens.
The Kiwanis Club held a contest among students in the Principles of Engineering class at DHS, where the club would pay to have the best bridge design from students built for the literary garden.
“We had a speaker a few months back from the garden come and talk with us. She was talking about the kids’ garden, and so we wanted to help participate somehow,” said Kiwanis Club member Carrie Woodson, who is also La Plata County’s assessor. “They talked about needing a bridge, so we coordinated with the school and said, ‘Hey, if you guys can design and build it, we’ll supply the funding and supplies.’”
Osborn’s footbridge design features a wooden bridge with four large, Japanese-style lanterns as posts. Within the lanterns Osborn said there will be cutouts of children’s literary characters that will be projected out from the light of the lanterns.
“Basically, the posts are going to be Japanese-style lanterns that have doors that can swing open for maintenance,” Osborn said. “On the inside of the lanterns there will be different parts that cover it and cast shadows of book characters out along the sides.”
At its meeting Thursday, Kiwanis Club members saw three design finalists’ presentations and voted for their favorite. The three finalists were chosen out of nine design projects.
Another design by 10th grader Nadis Halm featured a small footbridge with green posts and corrugated siding.
“I chose the green for the posts because it’s a bright color that’s used a lot in playgrounds,” he said. “It’s bright and happy, and reminds me of nature.”
One design was a team effort, produced by ninth graders Culley Feeney and Elijah Oyler. The two designed an interactive bridge that has toy pieces of things that represent Durango to them that moves along a rail along the side of the bridge.
“I wanted to incorporate something that’s interesting that kids can actually move and play with,” Oyler said.
One side of the bridge featured animals that are commonly found in Durango, such as fish, bears and an eagle. The other side had human-made vehicles that are often seen around Durango, such as a train, a raft and a hot-air balloon.
“All of these elements represent Durango, one is a nature side and the other is a man-made side,” Feeney said.
Durango High School’s Principles of Engineering teacher Jordan Englehart said he’s proud of his students and excited they had a way to apply what he was teaching in the classroom in their community.
“This is the goal of what we’re trying to do in education is create authentic learning engagements where what we’re learning in the classroom gets immediately applied to real-life skills,” he said.
Durango Botanic Gardens members also attended the Kiwanis meeting and got to see the design presentations from students.
“This is just such a fun project,” said Durango Botanic Gardens Vice President Barbara Johnson. “These students went overboard with their designs as far as being creative and putting together things that the kids would like.”
Johnson said one of the goals of the Literary Youth Garden has been to involve young people from the community to participate in building the garden.
“To get teenagers participating in the garden is just fantastic,” she said. “The more young people we can have be involved with the garden, the more it will be a youth garden for the youth of this community.”
njohnson@durangoherald.com
