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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"Statement of Significance:
The State Highway 3 Bridge at the Trinity River, built from 1929 to 1930, is significant for embodying the defining characteristics of a Texas Highway Department truss bridge. As such, it meets National Register Criterion C in the area of Engineering at a state level of significance.
The Trinity River bridge was built on the original SH 3, also known as the Southern National Highway, which linked Del Rio, San Antonio, Houston, Beaumont and Orange. From Seguin to Houston, the route paralleled a branch of the Texas & New Orleans Railroad (also known as the Southern Pacific Railroad). By about 1930, the route was actually designated SH 3/US 90; by 1938 the original SH 3 designation had been dropped. The Trinity River bridge replaced an unsafe truss bridge the Austin Bridge Company had built in 1914.
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In May 1927, engineers from TXHD, the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) and Liberty County inspected the old bridge and subsequently recommended that the load limit be reduced from 5 tons to 5,000 pounds and that the speed limit over the bridge be set at five miles per hour. . . .
Because the Trinity River fell under the jurisdiction of the War Department as a navigable waterway, TXHD was required to submit a preliminary design to that agency for approval. Under the River and Harbor Act passed by Congress in 1922, plans to develop navigation on the Trinity River upstream of Liberty were abandoned. However, the War Department considered the section of river south of Liberty to be "under improvement" and bridges constructed on that section had to address navigational clearance. The act did not specify the upstream point of this section, but as a practical matter, the War Department fixed that point at the Texas & New Orleans Railroad bridge, a swing bridge about 430 feet upstream from the proposed site of the new bridge. Wickline proposed that the site of the new bridge mark the upstream point of improvement so that the bridge would not have to include a movable span. In the end, the point was not relocated, and the plans the War Department approved showed fixed truss spans with a provision for the possible future conversion of the center truss to a vertical lift span. "
The SH 3 was one of the earliest highways in Texas, being one of the original 26 state highways that were designated in 1917.
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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."