Whatever Happened To ... the man obsessed with the Buffalo Bridge

By the time Jeff Nelson was featured in a July 16, 2000, Washington Post Magazine story, he had spent 13 years admiring, researching and photographing the Buffalo Bridge. He'd become obsessed with the architectural relic -- more formally known as the Q Street or Dumbarton Bridge -- that passes over Rock Creek, connecting Dupont Circle to Georgetown. His goal: to produce a hefty coffee-table book of historic black-and-white photographs.

Now 48, Nelson is still digging up information, still hoping to publish a book on his beloved bridge, which is nicknamed for its four huge bronze buffalo statues. But he no longer lives close enough to touch it. Six years ago, he moved to Toledo, where he spends much of his time researching on the Internet. Nelson had steered clear of online research while in Washington, because he found it rife with misinformation.

But Web sites, such as eBay, recently have brought some treasures (and enabled him to make friends who have added to another collection unrelated to the bridge: chewing gum). Nelson says he recently discovered a photo of Chief Kicking Bear, a Sioux medicine man who was the model for the 56 Indian heads that dot the bridge. The photo captures him during a tour stop in Glasgow, Scotland, when he was with Buffalo Bill Cody's "Wild West" show.

"I've got way more photos than could possibly fit in a book or anyone would want to see," Nelson says. But he keeps hoping to stumble onto something new, perhaps a photo of the father-and-son team who designed the bridge, Glenn Brown and Bedford Brown IV.

Nelson, who moved to Washington in 1976, says he fell in love with the architectural beauty and serenity of the bridge. And it was a great love that pried him away. While visiting the Toledo plant that produced the Jeep Wagoneer -- another obsession -- he found a neighborhood full of Victorian homes. Nelson had wanted to live in one since he was a teenager, he says, and fell hard for the largest neighborhood of late Victorian homes east of the Mississippi. He says his small 1920s Washington Colonial couldn't compare.

Since high school, Nelson, a former punk band drummer, has lived comfortably off a percentage of the earnings from a popular indie rock label -- Dischord Records -- that he founded in 1980 with former Minor Threat and Teen Idles band mate Ian MacKaye. Nelson returns regularly to Washington to admire the bridge, visit friends and help run Dischord.

He said he would be devastated if he found a worthwhile addition for the book after it is published, but he is shooting to finish by 2015, the bridge's 100th anniversary.