Rivers need bridges. Not just the concrete, wood or steel variety, but also connectors for community.

You’ll see a lot of that kind of connectivity tonight when hundreds of families gather on or near the Gov. James B. Longley Memorial Bridge, their “ooohhs” and “aaahhs” rising and falling in verbal accompaniment to bursts of color over the Great Falls. Lewiston-Auburn’s Liberty Festival is a prime example of the bridge for community metaphor.

Looking at the area’s physical bridges, it’s easy to see diversity of structure, purpose and historical uses. In the earliest days of L-A’s development, there were sites where ferries moved people and their goods across the Androscoggin River. Ferry Road in Lewiston near Lisbon is a present-day reminder of that time.

Winter ice or bad weather put limits on ferry use, so construction of bridges became a priority.

The first bridge between the evolving downtown areas of the towns was made of wood, and it was originally a toll bridge.

Through the years, that bridge near the falls has seen much reconstruction and many changes, including its name. For older generations, it was always North Bridge. I remember when high board windbreaks were erected just before winter each year to protect walkers from the bitterly cold blasts off the falls.

Though early spans were washed away in floods, the current bridge on concrete piers survives the frequent high water and provides some spectacular views when the river rages.

In the great flood of 1936, South Bridge between New Auburn and Lewiston’s “Little Canada” was partially swept away. It was rebuilt in its present steel truss form.

The river’s fury severely tested the Twin Cities’ bridges then, but just a year later there was even more turbulence, and this time it was on the top side of the northern span. Many L-A neighbors found themselves pitted against each other in fear and anger as a long and sometimes violent strike by shoe workers in 19 factories, mostly in Auburn, spilled across the river. Nearly 6,500 people were thrown out of work. The 96-day strike received national news attention. Six factories never reopened.

Local police were forced into raising their clubs against residents, including women, who were divided in their loyalties to family, community, employers and co-workers.

My mother was among those affected workers. It was a couple of years before I was born, and she was working in a local shoe shop to supplement the farm income.

We heard stories of how she quietly and resolutely crossed the picket lines, not in defiance of organization efforts or labor causes the other workers may have felt they needed to support, but because she felt simply that she had a job, she had a right to do it, and she would go ahead and do what she had to do for her family.

From March 1937 into the summer, it was a very difficult period in L-A’s history. The Maine National Guard was called out for 17 days to keep order. Simply crossing that bridge in those days must have taken considerable courage and determination. Emotional scars of that strike remained for years, as they do in all communities where ethnic or economic issues divide the populace.

Another L-A bridge arose from conflict and debate, this time political. It took 20 years for the final location and design of the “Third Bridge” to be worked out before it was constructed in the early 1970s across Boxer Island linking Russell Street at Main Street in Lewiston with Center Street and the Auburn Mall area.

The efforts of Lewiston’s “Mr. Democrat,” Louis Jalbert, will forever be associated with the project, but his name was not to be attached to it. There were political considerations in the naming debate, and compromise finally came down to calling it the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge.

Today, it’s mostly a utilitarian bridge. Vehicles zip across at highway speeds with scant view of the beautiful river below.

Nevertheless, this bridge boasts a feature of particular importance on this Independence Day. Drivers can’t miss the flags waving from makeshift flagstaffs atop tall pines on each side of the traffic lanes. It’s reported that a retired firefighter voluntarily places and maintains those flags at significant personal expense, effort and risk.

Railroads are the reason for a couple of other local bridges. The span known as the Maine Central Railroad trestle above the falls still carries dozens of freight cars across each day.

Down river, the old Grand Trunk Railroad bridge is now a pedestrian walkway between Auburn’s Bonney Park and Lewiston’s Railroad Park. Here generations ago, thousands of French-Canadian families completed their immigration to our cities, and now the community linkage has evolved literally from mass transportation to individual and personal use by L-A’s residents.

While we drive and walk across these river bridges, including the Maine Turnpike bridge built in the mid-1950s, and a few others across the canals and the Little Androscoggin in New Auburn, we can note many other bridges between cultures, such as the impressive Africana Festival held in Lewiston this past weekend. Even our municipal governments are exploring ways of bridging the two cities’ purchases and services.

There are many kinds of bridges that can bring us all together.