No happily ever after for Minnesota couple's love-lock story?

ROYALTON, MINN. – When Liza and Shane Dixon latched a padlock on a fence overlooking the Mississippi River last May, they thought it was for good this time.

Their ornate golden lock — adorned with a pair of lovebirds nestled among branches — had nearly been lost once after they fastened it to a chain-link fence in Sauk Rapids. Then, three months later, construction crews removed the fence during a city project to build an amphitheater. Liza just happened to drive by the park.

"I called [Shane]. He said, 'Don't worry. I'm coming with a bolt cutter. We'll find our lock.' Sure enough, there's five rolls of fencing they had taken down with hundreds of locks on them," she said. "We got lucky. It was on the outside."

A year later, the couple discovered a hidden gem in Royalton, about 30 miles north of St. Cloud: a bridge at the trailhead for the Soo Line South Trail, which spans the Mississippi, next to the century-old Blanchard Dam. More than five dozen other padlocks, weather-worn and some dating back more than a decade, hung from the fence. Here, the golden lovebirds would be safe, they thought.

This May, for the couple's first anniversary, they took their all-terrain vehicle out to visit their lock.

"Sure enough — it's not there," Dixon said. "I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me. We are bound and determined to keep this lock, but it just keeps disappearing on us.'"

A boom of 'love lock bridges'

In the past two decades, so-called "love lock bridges" have popped up (and some subsequently damaged and taken down) across the state and world. To many, the locks symbolize an unbreakable bond, especially when the couple clasps the lock shut and tosses the key into the water below.

The most famous is the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris, which reportedly had more than 700,000 padlocks on it in 2015 when some of the fencing buckled from the weight, leading officials to remove the locks.

Other bridges lined with locks can be found in San Antonio and Miami, as well as Vermillion Falls Park in Hastings. A similar collection of locks at Duluth's Lakewalk were removed a few years ago after a storm damaged posts, benches and boardwalk planks.

Shane bought the lovebird lock on eBay and had it engraved with their names and the day they became a couple — May 8, 2020.

"That had been my one year sober," Liza Dixon said. "In recovery, your sponsor always says wait until you're a year sober, so that's when we started dating."

The Sartell couple got married last May. For their anniversary this year, they took their side-by-side out for a spin on the Soo Line.

"We were stumped. We went through it two times," Dixon said of their bewilderment at the missing lock. "Gosh, I guess our first thought was, it was stolen. And our second thought was, maybe we just don't know where we put it."

But it wasn't there.

Liza posted to a community page on Facebook, sharing pictures of the lock and a plea for any information. One person wrote they pick locks for fun during their spare time and remember seeing the lovebirds lock at the dam last summer. A few people chastised the couple for affixing something to a public bridge, which could be considered property damage.

"The things you do for love …" Dixon said with a sigh in response to the negative feedback.

Another commenter suggested reaching out to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which maintains some public lands. She did, but had no luck.

No desire to become 'that' bridge

The Minnesota Star Tribune then learned that county staff members maintain the Soo Line trail in Morrison County. Tony Hennen, public works director, was sympathetic but said he doesn't know what happened to the Dixon's lock.

"There isn't really a policy or anything like that about locks on the bridge," he said. "We notice them. We don't do anything with them. I talked with some of our maintenance staff. We haven't removed any of our locks."

Hennen said a padlock could be removed if it is on a damaged piece of fence that needed replacing, but staff hasn't done that recently.

"We don't exactly want to encourage people locking stuff onto the bridge, but hopeless romantics will continue with their love locks, if I'm not mistaken," he said, before emphasizing the county is not looking to become the next hot spot for love locks.

"We don't really have a desire to become that here in Morrison County," he said with a laugh.

Liza and Shane have accepted the lock was likely stolen and is gone for good. But they are making one last plea to trail users and pawn shops in hope of the lock's safe homecoming.

"I would pay someone 50 bucks if they returned it. I really would," she said. "It would warm my soul if we found it. And then I would just keep it at home; I'm going to hang it in my garden."