The bridge's original location was here. (
visit link) There is a good article here about Denton County's work towards preserving their old bridges (slightly edited). (
visit link)
The Denton County Commissioners Court faced a dilemma in the early 1880s. During the previous decade, the county’s population had jumped from 7,000 to more than 18,000 residents. Farmers who had once only planted corn and just enough vegetables to feed their families began turning wide swaths of prairie into the money-making crops of wheat and cotton.
The changes promised economic development and growth, yet the county’s potential wouldn’t be fulfilled unless residents could reliably cross Hickory Creek and other streams. A growing constituency demanded improved transportation routes to support increased commerce and to connect residents to the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, Santa Fe and other railway lines just coming into the county.
So in 1882, the commissioners court appropriated $10,000 to construct eight bridges on Denton County’s major transportation arteries. The court thought the project was so important that it tapped the county’s Permanent School Fund to pay for it. In subsequent years through 1895, Denton County voters, through referendums, approved spending additional public funds to build more bridges. By 1910, the county had placed about 30 iron and steel bridges over waterways once spanned only by wooden bridges or by none at all, said DJ Taylor, Denton County Historical Commission member. Many were constructed in the Pratt through-truss style. The bridges became important symbols of modernity that provided reliable crossings to the nearby communities that depended upon them.
Although the county lost some of its historical bridges during the past 100-plus years, recent efforts by the commissioners court and local preservationists have helped save many of its tangible links to the past.
Avoiding the Scrap Heap
The impetus to rescue the relics initially came from Mildred Hawk, a Denton County Historical Commission member who began researching historic bridges in the late 1990s and chaired the commission’s Historic Bridges and Structures Committee during the following decade. Hawk, now deceased, spearheaded bridge preservation projects and created a brochure featuring photos and details of more than a dozen bridges throughout Denton County. When County Judge Mary Horn took office during her first term in 2002, she caught the bridge preservation bug, and the commissioners court began working cooperatively with state and local organizations to save more.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) told the county in 2002 that it was time to replace a number of its old, one-lane bridges for safety reasons. Denton County took advantage of TxDOT’s Bridge Replacement Program to address the problem. Through the program, which continues today, the county provided 10 percent matching funds to address bridges needing attention. The state provided 10 percent and the federal government paid the remaining 80 percent.
The city of Denton had already helped the county preserve its turn-of-the-century County Line Road Bridge over Denton Creek by adopting and moving it to North Lakes Park in 2001. There, it became a pedestrian bridge situated over a willow-lined creek beyond earshot of nearby Windsor Road. The tranquil setting makes the 1920s bridge a perfect spot for a shady picnic. According to a newspaper report from the time, Hawk got the ball rolling, with the city, the historical commission and the country working together on the project. Denton paid $131,000 to move the 41,000-pound structure.
After that success, Horn thought it was time to see what other partners might want to adopt bridges to keep them off the scrap heap.
“We had scheduled (historic) bridges for replacement in 2003 and 2004 and I thought, there’s all this construction of new facilities across the county — new schools, new city halls — maybe somebody could use one or more of these bridges in their landscape,” Horn said.
The county offered several historic bridges for adoption to municipalities, school districts and the U.S. Corps of Engineers, which owns some of the land adjacent to county waterways. The “adoptive parent” needed only to pay the cost to move the bridge, make it accessible to the public in its new location and pay to erect a county historical marker at the site.
County staff provided valuable assistance and coordinated with the bridge’s new owners to help get them placed. The cooperative effort lead to 13 of the county’s old bridges finding new homes, said Beth Stribling, Denton County Historical Commission chair.
“Without the commissioners court’s action, we wouldn’t have any of those bridges,” said Stribling.
Taylor agreed. “We’re all very lucky and grateful that Judge Horn and the commissioners court have stood with us on this effort to save these bridges. We’re very fortunate.”
Serving New Purposes
A few of the adopted bridges removed from county roads are awaiting placement at new parks and other facilities that are soon to be developed, but 10 bridges are now easily accessible to the public.
One of those is the 80-foot-long Pratt through-truss style Rector Road Bridge, which was built in 1907-1908 to carry travelers over Clear Creek outside Sanger. The Denton County School District adopted the structure, which now bears the foot traffic of Guyer High School students and teachers crossing an environmentally sensitive area between the school’s main campus and its athletic facilities.
Horn was impressed when she learned of the repurposed historic bridge’s expanded significance in its new home. “I was at the dedication of the historical marker for the bridge and the principal said ‘we just got the prototype of our new yearbook. On the front cover is a picture of the bridge and that’s what their yearbook is called – The Bridge.’ (Symbolizing) the bridge between your high school years and the rest of our life,” Horn recalled.
Believing that the county should also incorporate historic bridges into its own facilities, Horn proposed moving two small, steel bridges to the new Denton County Administrative Complex. The white painted iron trusses of the 1903 Donald Road Bridge, which once spanned South Hickory Creek near Krum, and the 1923 Gregory Road Bridge, which once crossed Duck Creek near Sanger, now provide a focal point in the 41-acre Denton County Administrative Complex in Denton. The historical commission will dedicate Denton County Historical markers for each this spring.
The two small bridges — both just over 50 feet in length and laid end to end — span a landscaped waterway behind the County Health Department. The area features native grasses, Black-eyed Susans, roses and picnic tables. The bridges and a crushed granite trail connect the department to other county offices.
“The two at our facility add to the beauty of the complex and give it some character that otherwise wouldn’t be there,” Horn said.
Tracking Down and Sharing History
Stribling said preservation efforts now focus on preserving the bridges’ histories and sharing their stories with the public. The histories of many of the moved county bridges hadn’t been documented. “I was very concerned,” she said. “I knew the bridges were being dispersed throughout the county and no one was keeping track of their history.”
Old bridges that remain on rural county roads and on private land are also being catalogued and added to the commission’s list for preservation, Stribling said. She’s received help pinpointing their exact locations from Denton County GIS Manager Rachel Crowe.
Commission volunteers dig through historic records not only for details about a bridge’s construction and its architectural significance, but to uncover its importance to the particular county residents who used it.
Efforts to designate county historical markers for a few of the adopted bridges are on hold until those structures land in their permanent homes. “We’re hoping that within a year we’ll have the county historical markers for all of them,” Stribling said. “Eventually, we’ll create a new brochure that shows the historic bridge trail in the county showing where the bridges were and where they are now.”
Meanwhile, the commission’s brochure, The Historical Iron Bridges of Denton County, provides a good overview of 17 of the county’s historic bridge bounty. Since its publication, the county has identified three other old bridges to add to the list. Information about the bridges is also available from the commission’s website at www.dentoncounty.com/dchc. Two of the bridges featured remain in their original locations and are accessible to the public, although they are long-since retired from service to trucks and cars.
The Elm Fork Bridge is one. When FM 428 was widened in 1990, the 1922 Elm Fork Bridge was decommissioned but remained in place as vehicle traffic was re-routed over a new concrete bridge built a stone’s throw away. The 250-foot steel truss bridge, which traverses the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, is now a striking landmark along the Ray Roberts Lake State Park Greenbelt. The county historical commission submitted an application to the Texas Historical Commission in 2013 for a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark marker. The main span of the two-lane bridge is a 100-foot-long Pratt through-truss. Its east and west spans are Warren pony trusses of 70 feet each.
The county’s oldest remaining Pratt-truss iron bridge, Old Alton Bridge, was built in 1884 over Hickory Creek at Copper Canyon Road and that’s where it remains today. The roadway was rerouted in 1997. The 145-foot bridge once carried travelers on the main route from Denton to Dallas. Harkening to its earliest days, it now bears the feet and hooves of hikers and equestrians enjoying a trail that connects parks in the Lake Lewisville area. Old Alton Bridge joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 and also has a Recorded Texas Landmark designation from the Texas Historical Commission.
Capturing this history and sharing it with the public in the growing county is paramount to preservationists. “The county’s historic bridges help newcomers to Denton County connect with and learn about its roots,” Taylor said.
“It helps to understand how the county developed,” he added. “You know what the bridges were used for and how important they were to the county. They share a little bit of history you can actually touch and see.”
Practical reuse of the historic structures is an added benefit.
“People appreciate when you can recycle things from the past for use for the future and maintain their integrity and beauty,” Horn said. “It’s just a nice thing to see.”