The StarTribune website has a slideshow on the Mendota Bridge, which just celebrated its 80th anniversary last week. It includes this photo (click to enlarge) of the Mendota Ferry which “made one of its last trips before the bridge opened in November of 1926.”

If you look closely in the photo, you can see a man standing on the ferry with a team of horses. That was the job that my grandfather, Herbert Wigley, and his brother Charles had for many years. It’s probably not either of them in the photo, as I think they’d moved onto other careers by then. But my mother says that she saw a photo of them on the ferry when visiting the Henry Sibley House in Mendota many years ago… though she wasn’t able to find it in subsequent visits.