A gorgeous truss bridge was built in 1930 to carry the SH 3/US 90/OST over the Trinity River west of the small town of Liberty Texas. The bridge and this alignment of the US 90 was bypassed by a modern freeway and bridge in the late 1990s, at which time this bridge was closed to the public.
A fragment of the old pavement of the SH3/US 90/OST remains west from the end of a business' driveway (from what was the OST and is in 2017 a local business access road). The county stops paving at the driveway to the business, but the rest of the degraded pavement continues on to the fence that blocks foot and vehicle traffic from entering the old bridge, and across the bridge to the other side (which is also blocked to traffic).
The SH 3/US 90/OST Trinity River Bridge was posted to the US National Register of Historic places in 1996. That file is available here: (
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The SH 3 was one of the earliest highways in Texas, being one of the original 26 state highways that were designated in 1917.
From Wikipedia: (
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"SH 3 was one of the original twenty six state highways proposed in 1917, overlaid on top of the Southern National Highway. From 1919, the routing mostly followed present day U.S. Highway 90 from Orange to Houston and San Antonio through to Del Rio."
The SH3/OST passed through Liberty, a small town between Beaumont and Houston. The OST was co-designated with the SH 3 until 1926, when the Auto Trails and some major state highways were reclassified as federal highway. This part of the OST/SH 3 was designated US 90, and gradually both the OST and SH 3 names faded. By 1938 the designation of this road as SH 3 was completely dropped. See: (
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"[page 12] The Texas Highway Commission affirmed the importance of the Old Spanish Trail in 1921, when it identified most of SH 3 as part of the Federal Aid Highway System. (Refer to Figure 46 previous Section I.4.)
The Commission also reiterated the 1917 identity of SH 3 as beginning near Orange and ending in Del Rio. Elements of the highway in the System between those two points included stretches between Orange, Beaumont, Nome, Devers, Liberty, Crosby, Houston, Sugarland, Richmond, East Bernard, Eagle Lake, Columbus, Weimar, Flatonia, and Waelder. The route of SH 3 within the Federal Aid Highway System resumed in Gonzales and went to Seguin, Schertz, San Antonio, Castroville, Hondo, Sabinal, Uvalde, Brackettville, and Del Rio."