Have you passed the island in the Saluda River and wondered about it?

Thousands of canoeists, kayakers and tubers have.

Until this month, the 6-acre island was unreachable except by water. The City of Columbia owns the island.

The River Alliance is erecting a steel bridge to reach it on foot. And the Darnell W. Boyd Foundation came up with the $500,000 to do it.

The bridge is the latest project in the area’s green-way along the Broad, Congaree and Saluda Rivers.

River Alliance Executive Director Mike Dawson said the greenway idea came from a Columbia Chamber visit to Nashville, TN.

City officials had developed the Cumberland River as a tourist attraction.

Columbia officials came home with a commitment to do something for the public with our rivers.

“I was just at the right place at the right time,” Dawson said of help with the River Alliance between both sides of the rivers.

When he retired from the US Army at Fort Jackson, the rivers were a wild and beautiful but inaccessible part of the Midlands.

Today the vision that started in Nashville has become the river walking trails stretching as far south as the City of Cayce.

If you have you have ever paddled down the Saluda below the Lake Murray dam, you have passed the island that splits the river.

You undoubtedly used the main channel on the Lexington County side. The Columbia side channel is rocky and less navigable.

In the next few days Boyd Island will be reachable by a 105-foot steel bridge from the Riverwalk on the river’s Columbia side.

Dawson told members of the Cayce-West Columbia Chamber at their monthly breakfast that the bridge is being positioned where the Saluda and Broad rivers come together.

Watch the Chronicle and the Lake Murray Fish Wrapper for details about when the bridge will open publicly.