DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Broad Street Bridge in Mason County. Now, some stories start with a grand vision. This one starts with mud — and a creek that didn't care one bit about your plans.
Comanche Creek ran right through the middle of Mason, splitting the town clean in two, north from south. And for the folks of Mason, that was a problem worth fixing. So in 1914, the citizens petitioned the county commissioners court.
They wanted a reliable way across. Reasonable request. The commissioners agreed it was a fine idea, looked at the construction bids that came in, and decided those bids were — well, let's just say — not so fine.
Too high. The whole thing stalled right there. Now, a lesser town might've shrugged and learned to live wet.
Not Mason. They came back in 1917 with a second petition. Persistent as a Texas summer.
This time, things started moving. But here's where the story gets interesting. Mason had no railroad.
No railroad means no easy way to haul in large pre-fabricated building materials — the kind you'd normally order up and have delivered to a bridge site. So the Alamo Construction Company did something that tells you everything about how problems get solved out here: they crafted the bridge of reinforced concrete, right on site, in 1918. Mixed it, formed it, shaped it — right there over Comanche Creek.
What they built was a concrete truss bridge, and by 1998, it may well have been the last one of its kind still standing in Texas. Still carrying vehicular and pedestrian traffic across that same creek that once divided a town. Four years of petitioning, a rejected bid, a second try, and a construction crew working without a railroad at their back.
That's the Broad Street Bridge — and it's still there.
What the marker says
In 1914, citizens of Mason petitioned the county commissioners court for a reliable means of crossing Comanche Creek, which separated north and south Mason. Initial construction bids were deemed too high and a second petition was presented in 1917. Because Mason had no railroad to transport large pre-fabricated building materials, the Alamo Construction Company crafted the bridge of reinforced concrete on site in 1918. Perhaps the last concrete truss bridge to remain in Texas, the Broad Street Bridge continued to support vehicular and pedestrian traffic in Mason in 1998. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark -1998