My son moved to San Saba about 12 years ago. On one of my visits there he said that he had something to show me. He then took me a few miles northwest of San Saba to see the Regency Suspension Bridge which spans the Colorado River between San Saba County and Mills County. This is the bridge that appears in the opening segment of Texas Country Reporter with Bob Phillips.

Seeing this bridge got me interested in suspension bridges; or swinging bridges as some call them because some of them do swing as you go across.

One of the better known is the Waco Suspension Bridge; the first bridge over the Brazos River, completed in December 1869 and opened for use in January  1870. The Waco Bridge was supposedly the first suspension bridge west of the Mississippi River. This was on one section of the old Chisholm Trail and many herds of Texas Longhorns from deep south Texas made their Brazos River crossing over this bridge.   

Another bridge of local interest is the Bluff Dale Suspension Bridge between Granbury and Stephenville. This bridge was built and put in service in 1891 on the main road over the Paluxy River that became State Hwy 10 and later U.S. 377. By 1933 traffic demanded a wider bridge and in 1934 authorities moved the “swinging” bridge 15 miles upstream to serve local traffic. This bridge is now just a few blocks north of downtown Bluff Dale.

Last year while visiting Larry Dennis over in Natty Flatt, I told him about my interest in the old suspension bridges. He then told about finding one while driving on some of the back roads between Natty Flatt and Thurber. The bridge was a short distance south of I-20 and east of Thurber.

We recently headed out to Thurber to locate this suspension bridge. Exiting I-20 at Thurber we headed back east on the access road. About two miles east of Thurber we spotted Hwy 108 to Stephenville and here we turned south. We crossed several creeks but saw no sign of a suspension bridge.

After about eight miles I told my wife that Larry had said that it was just a short distance south of I-20 and that we had gone too far. Turning around, we headed back to I-20, looking again to see if we could spot the old bridge with no luck. At I-20 we headed back to Thurber on the access road.  

At Thurber we stopped at the W. K. Gordon Center for Texas Industrial History. Surely someone here could tell me how to get to the old suspension bridge. Well, I was wrong. No one at the history center knew anything about a suspension bridge in the area.

It was only a little after noon and we still had half a day ahead of us. Now, we headed back to Natty Flat to get more information. When I told Larry where we had been, he laughed and said that we were too far west. The road where the bridge was located was east of the Stephenville highway. The bridge can be seen from one of the county gravel roads. Heading south from I-20, when you get to a concrete bridge you can see the old suspension bridge off to the right. Larry said that he thought there was an overpass over I-20 that led to the road.

We then headed back to Thurber. We found the overpass about a mile east of Texas 108. This was County Road 116 and we headed south. Wait a minute, Larry said that was on a gravel road and this road was paved. However, we didn’t go more than a quarter mile when the pavement ran out. Now, we were on the gravel road.

About a half mile farther and we came to a concrete bridge, Looking off to the right we could see the remains of the old bridge. It was about 50 feet from the road in some rancher’s pasture. The grassy area by the fence had been packed down; apparently by people stopping and walking over to the fence to get a better look at the bridge.

Apparently at one time people had been going through the fence to get a closer look. Some new posts had been put in and some new barbed wire stretched across them. I did not want to tackle that tightly stretched barbed wire so we looked and took our pictures from outside the fence.

The two steel posts at each end of the bridge were still in place and the anchor cables were still anchored to the ground. There were five smaller cables from each post going down and attaching to the bridge frame at various points. Cables from each end reach about midway of the bridge.

The steel framework was all that was left and I couldn’t tell if it had been metal flooring like the Bluff Dale Bridge or if it had been wooden flooring. You could get a better view of the bridge structure looking from the new concrete bridge.

Brush has grown up around the ends of the bridge and there is no evidence of a road ever being there. It has probably been 70 years or more since this bridge was last used. Larry did not give a name for this bridge so I just call it the Thurber Bridge.

While traveling around and seeing these old ‘swinging bridges’ reminds me of a time when life was slower and more carefree.

Most of the early suspension bridges were narrow, only wide enough for a buggy or wagon, and later a car, to cross in one direction. If you came to a bridge and someone had already started across from the other side you would pull over to the side of the road and wait for them to cross.

As one old song says, “time changes everything,” and boy has life changed over the past 100 years. Sometimes I wonder if this fast-paced lifestyle is really healthy for us.

     

John Watson is a Cleburne resident who can be reached at texastraveler@sbcglobal.net.