GREENFIELD – Nineteen collars and more than a few tears were left behind after the dedication of Baker’s Rainbow Bridge last weekend in Beckenholdt Park.
The colorful memorial was built to give pet owners a place to honor their pets who have passed by placing a collar on a rainbow-colored bridge – which represents a place between heaven and earth where pets wait to be reunited with their owners.
Roughly 150 people showed up to dedicate the bridge under sunny blue skies Saturday afternoon.
“We couldn’t have asked for a nicer day,” said Greenfield Parks assistant director Julie Patterson, who hung a collar in memory of her dog, Cocoa.
Dawn Hanson, the Greenfield woman who helped raise money for the local parks department to build the bridge, addressed the crowd at the dedication.
“This is so much more than what I thought it was going to be. It’s just absolutely beautiful,” she said.
Hanson shared how she and her husband drove nearly nine hours to visit the Rainbow Bridge in Lake Lure, N.C. in March after the sudden death of their dog, Baker. It was the closest Rainbow Bridge she could find at the time, she said.
Those in attendance Saturday held a moment of silence in honor of hurricane victims and the Lake Lure bridge, which was destroyed by Hurricane Helene in late September.
Hanson said she’s thankful pet owners now have a place in Greenfield to honor their furry loved ones, which many consider to be members of the family.
Just as she drove nearly nine hours to the Rainbow bridge in Lake Lure, she anticipates pet lovers will drive great distances to visit the new bridge in Hancock County.
Patterson said that Baker’s Rainbow Bridge – named in honor of Hanson’s beloved Boston Terrier – is the only one she knows of in the Midwest.
She thanked the Hancock County Tourism & Visitors Bureau for contributing $5,000 to the project.
“I think it’s going to be a tourist destination,” said Patterson, who plans to host a pet memorial ceremony there each year.
She credited parks maintenance operations manager Josh Gentry for building the bridge and local artist Lisa Sears for painting the accompanying murals, generating funding from pet owners who paid to have their pet’s names and likeness painted on a concrete wall near the bridge.
The bridge is 16 feet long, 6 feet wide and 5 feet tall, with chain fencing where visitors can hang pet collars.
Patterson said the parks department still plans to add some landscaping and other finishing touches to make the project complete.
She invites the public to hang collars for their late pets anytime on the bridge, which sits just north of the Rover’s Run Bark Park in Beckenholdt Park, at 2770 N. Franklin St.
Mural spots are still available, in which owners can have their pet’s likeness painted for $300 to support the bridge.
For more information, call 317-477-4340 or email [email protected].
