Minnesota's young couple issues plea for lost 'love lock'

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.

- Jenny Berg, Tribune News Service

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 hiddengem 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."