The Bridge That Opened the West

Stand at the edge of the Brazos and look at the suspension bridge. It opened in eighteen seventy, and when it did, it was the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi River, stretching four hundred and seventy-five feet across a river that had been stopping cattle drives cold for twenty years. The bridge was designed by engineer Thomas Griffith, though its wire cables came from the firm of John Augustus Roebling, the same engineer who would go on to design the Brooklyn Bridge.

Those cables and the towers around them turned a dangerous ford into a reliable crossing, and the timing could not have been more consequential. The Chisholm Trail was in its peak years. Texas longhorns were moving north by the millions toward Kansas railheads, and the Brazos had been one of the most treacherous crossings on the entire route.

At flood stage the river could swallow men and cattle alike. The bridge changed Waco overnight. Drovers brought their herds across rather than gambling on a swim crossing.

Merchants set up on both banks to sell supplies and provisions. The town's population, which stood at roughly three thousand in eighteen seventy, more than doubled within a decade, and by nineteen hundred it had reached nearly twenty-one thousand. What makes the bridge remarkable is that it is still standing.

More than a hundred and fifty years after its completion, the original cables and stone towers remain in service, now carrying pedestrians and cyclists along the riverfront. It is among the oldest surviving suspension bridges in the United States. The city eventually built automobile bridges upstream and downstream, but the original suspension bridge became a point of civic pride rather than a relic to be demolished.

Waco kept it. On a quiet morning, with the Brazos running copper-colored below and herons working the shallows, it is easy to understand why.