DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the 1931 Free Bridge Controversy, out of Grayson County, Texas. Now, you'd think opening a bridge would be a straightforward affair. Cut a ribbon, wave folks across, everybody goes home happy.
But this is Texas — and Oklahoma — and the summer of 1931, and nothing about this story is straightforward. It started, as so many good Texas tangles do, with legislation. Late 1920s legislation, to be precise, passed in both Texas and Oklahoma.
The two states agreed to cooperate on building free highway bridges across the Red River, because traffic was increasing fast and the old ways of crossing weren't keeping up. One of those planned bridges was located near a place called Colbert Bridge — a toll bridge with roots stretching back to the mid-nineteenth century, descended from what had once been Colbert's Ferry. Now, Colbert Bridge had operators.
That outfit was called the Red River Bridge Company, and they had a contract with the Texas Highway Commission that promised them compensation for their anticipated losses once the free bridge opened and took their paying customers away. So when the Free Bridge was ready to open in early July 1931, the Red River Bridge Company went to court. They obtained a federal restraining order blocking the opening of that free bridge until those contractual payments had been made.
Texas Governor Ross Sterling complied with the injunction. That was his position, and he held it. Oklahoma Governor William Murray had a different disposition entirely.
Murray — and this detail matters — was not a party to the contract between the Texas Highway Commission and the Red River Bridge Company. That contract wasn't his. So he asked Governor Sterling to join him in protesting the injunction.
Sterling refused. Murray didn't wait around. He ordered the removal of barricades that the Texas Highway Commission had erected.
And for twelve hours, traffic flowed freely across that bridge. Twelve hours of people just... crossing a river without paying anybody a dime. In 1931, that was practically a revolution.
But by July seventeenth, Texas Rangers had taken up positions guarding the southern side of the bridge. The state of Texas was holding that line. Oklahoma, not to be outdone, played its own card.
Oklahoma highway crews rerouted traffic away from Colbert Bridge entirely, sending it instead to Preston Bridge, several miles away. And then — and this is the move that really escalated things — those same crews dismantled the approach to Colbert Bridge from the Oklahoma side. They tore out the road leading to the toll bridge.
The Red River Bridge Company's whole operation was being squeezed from both directions. Tensions were rising in that summer heat, the kind of heat that makes people say things they can't take back and do things that end up on historical markers. It was getting close to the breaking point.
And then the injunction was suspended. On Labor Day, 1931, the Texas Rangers — who had been standing guard on that southern bank — opened the Free Bridge. The same Rangers who'd been keeping people off it now waved them on across.
That bridge served the crossing for decades. It stood until 1995, when it was replaced by a new structure. And when it came down, not all of it disappeared.
A portion of the Free Bridge was placed in a park in Colbert, Oklahoma, about two miles north — a piece of a bridge that two governors once nearly went to war over, now sitting quiet in a park, letting people walk past and wonder. Some bridges carry traffic. This one carried a whole lot more than that.
What the marker says
As a result of late 1920s legislation in Texas and Oklahoma, the two states cooperated on a project to build free highway bridges spanning the Red River to accommodate rapidly increasing highway traffic. One of these bridges was near Colbert Bridge, a toll bridge descended from the mid-19th century Colbert's Ferry. When the Free Bridge was ready to open in early July 1931, the Red River Bridge Company, operators of Colbert Bridge, obtained a federal restraining order against the opening of the Free Bridge until contractual payments had been made to compensate the company for their anticipated loss. Texas Governor Ross Sterling complied, but Oklahoma Governor William Murray, who was not a party to the contract between the Texas Highway Commission and the Red River Bridge Company, asked Governor Sterling to join him in protesting the injunction. Sterling refused. Murray ordered the removal of barricades erected by the Texas Highway Commission. For twelve hours, traffic flowed freely across the bridge. By July 17, Texas Rangers guarded the southern side. Oklahoma highway crews rerouted traffic from Colbert Bridge to Preston Bridge several miles away and dismantled the approach to the Colbert Bridge from Oklahoma. As tensions came close to breaking in the summer heat, the injunction was suspended; the Texas Rangers opened the bridge on Labor Day, 1931. It served until 1995, when it was replaced by a new structure. A portion of the Free Bridge was placed in a park in Colbert, Oklahoma, about two miles north. (1998)