Dixon Teen Crosses Bridge By Fixing It on Road to Becoming an Eagle Scout

The road to becoming an Eagle Scout can be filled with roadblocks, but for one Dixon youth it was a rickety bridge that stood in the way.

So what did 17-year-old Chris Evans do about it? He fixed it.

Evans completed the final project for his Eagle Scout Badge in August by renovating the Northwest Park bridge in a three-month effort that took over 170 hours to complete.

"I needed to find an Eagle Scout project, so me and my friend Austin Lane hopped on our bikes and rode around town looking for things that needed repair,” said Evans. “We looked for problems and wrote them down and finally decided that the bridge was going to be the best project for me."

“Our public works staff recommended the project,” said Chief Aaron McAlister. “The bridge had some boards that were broken. It didn’t look very good, and it was aged because of the weather and the sprinklers. When mothers would take a stroller across the bridge it would rattle and move around because the boards were so worn.”

The put up half of the money for the bridge repairs, while Evans raised the rest of the funds himself, as well as receiving donations from Meek’s Lumber and Hardware in Vacaville for the project.

“I replaced eight floorboards—ripped them out and put in new ones," Evans said. "I sanded a lot of the floorboards down so they weren’t so bumpy. I replaced around 120 bolts throughout the bridge. All the side railings and the top railings, I ripped them off and replaced them. There were four main posts that hold up the bridge. I replaced the corner ones. Then I put on two coats of stain.”

The Eagle Scouts require that the final project take at least 150 hours to complete — 50 hours for planning and 100 for execution. Evans easily surpassed that, putting in 170 hours of his time starting in May of this year, and finishing on Aug. 21.

“My brother James and my dad helped me out a lot,” said Evans. “Both my brothers have their Eagle Scouts and so does my dad. I already worked on a construction crew for two years so I was a skilled carpenter."

Even with the extra help, Evans encountered several problems along the way.

“A lot of the bolts that hold the bridge in were so rusted that when we went to take them out they just snapped off,” said Evans. “We had a lot of problems with bolts breaking. We also had a problem with the new boards that we got because they were thicker by just a tiny bit because the old boards were squished down over time from so many people walking on them. We had to sand them down to make it a little more flat.”

Aside from the planning and building processes, the scouts require that a candidate for an Eagle Scout badge has to submit a five-page report on their final project, as well as a thesis of sorts that chronicles their entire scouting history — detailing when, where, how, and from whom each merit badge was earned. Adding to the challenge is the fact that there are strict guidelines to having everything completed and submitted on time.

“Eagle scouts have a deadline,” said McAlister. “If you don’t have it completed by the time you turn 18, it's too late. He was approaching that deadline.”

Evans also had a board review where he appeared before a group of Scout Masters for an interview process. The final step in the whole endeavor is an upcoming “Court of Honor” ceremony where he is officially recognized for his achievement.

While most drop out of the scouts long before earning their Eagle badge, Evans, a full-time student at Solano Community College, decided to keep going due to his family history in the organization, as well as a desire to finish what he started.

“The reason I stuck with it was because I was really into the scouts," said Evans. "I had a lot of fun and really enjoyed doing scouting things when I was like 14. I would help organize everyone. I had one more merit badge left to get before I could do my Eagle Scout project, and I had to just finish. If I quit then it would’ve been lame, so I did it.”

Although he has already received his Eagle Scout status, Evans says he will continue to be a part of the scouts for the foreseeable future.

“When I’m an old geezer, I’ll probably still be involved with scouts,” said Evans. “I will support them and what they do, but I don’t think I’ll be a scout master. I’ll definitely be a merit badge counselor, though.”