The Nation: Bridge Over Sand

The nation was a vast cultural transplant to begin with. All along, Americans have sought to import something of their heritage more solid than themselves—the literature, theater and music of Europe and now, for black Americans, the culture of Africa.

In 1968, Oilman and Industrialist Robert McCulloch, 59, arranged the improbable purchase of the London Bridge, which was not exactly falling down into the Thames but was badly in need of replacement. The granite balustrades, corbels, facings, cutwaters and retaining walls—10,000 tons in all—were shipped block by block across ocean and desert to be reconstructed in Lake Havasu City, an Arizona town...