DUANE
Duane's take
Now here's my telling of what the Texas Historical Commission put on a marker out by the Elm Fork of the Trinity River — and the bridge it's talking about has a story worth stopping for. Picture Denton County in 1922. Automobiles are multiplying on the roads like jackrabbits after a good rain, and the old iron bridges — those narrow, one-way affairs — just weren't keeping up.
So somebody made a decision: we're going to build something longer, wider, and tougher than anything this county has seen. The Denton Construction Company took that job, and when they were done, the Elm Fork Bridge stood 250 feet long — the longest bridge in the county at the time. Not a modest achievement for a crew working a stretch of river in north Texas.
They broke ground in early March of 1922, pouring the concrete piers and abutments while the whole crew stood around waiting — waiting on steel. The shipments were due later that month, and you can imagine the foreman checking the road every morning. When it finally arrived, they got to work on something worth looking at: a 100-foot Pratt through-truss anchoring the main span, with Warren pony trusses 70 feet long reaching out to the east and west as approach spans.
Iron and geometry, holding hands over the Elm Fork of the Trinity. And unlike those older bridges that forced every wagon and motorcar to take turns, this one was built for two-way traffic. That was the whole point.
The automobiles were coming whether anybody was ready or not, and this bridge was Denton County's answer. Now the road it carried had history even before the concrete was poured. It was one of the original wagon trails leading out of Denton, and it had grown into something called Sherman Highway — connecting Denton all the way to the U.S.
Federal Court up in Sherman. Locally, it served as a feeder road and mail route lacing together Denton, Aubrey, and Sanger. Farmers used it.
Cattle ranchers used it. For a good stretch of the twentieth century, if you lived or worked on that stretch of the Elm Fork, the bridge was just part of the rhythm of your days — until the river was dammed and some of those early farms and ranches went under the water entirely. The land changed.
The bridge endured. It kept carrying traffic all the way to 1990. That's when Sherman Highway got widened — it goes by FM 428 now — and the old bridge got bypassed.
A lesser structure might've been torn down and forgotten. But this one got a second life. It was repurposed as a pedestrian bridge, sitting right where it was always sitting, and it became part of Ray Roberts Lake State Park Greenbelt.
The greenbelt opened on National Trails Day in 1999 as a wilderness recreation area — twenty miles of multiuse trail following the banks of the same Elm Fork the bridge has spanned for over a century. Only two accessible iron and steel bridges from that era remain in Denton County, still standing in their original locations on public land. This is one of them.
Built in 1922 to handle the rush of a new age, and still there — letting people walk across the same water, on the same trail, the old wagon road once called Sherman Highway ran through. Some things, if you build them right, just refuse to leave.
What the marker says
This historic bridge was an important two-way traffic bridge over the Elm Fork of the Trinity River for growing automobile traffic in Denton County in the 1920s. The bridge is one of only two accessible iron and steel bridges in Denton County remaining in its original location on public land. Denton Construction Company began work on the bridge in 1922 and, at the time, it was the longest bridge in the county at 250 feet long. Concrete piers and abutments were installed in early March 1922 while crews waited for the shipments of steel to arrive later that month. The main span of the bridge is a 100-foot Pratt through-truss; east and west approach spans are Warren pony trusses 70 feet in length. Early iron bridges could only accommodate one-way traffic. The Elm Fork Bridge was built for two-way traffic in response to the growing number of automobiles on the roads. Built on one of the original wagon trails leading out of Denton, the road became known as Sherman Highway, connecting Denton with the U.S. Federal Court in Sherman. It was used locally as a feeder road and mail route between Denton, Aubrey and Sanger. It also served early farms and cattle ranches in the area; some were later inundated when the river was dammed. The bridge served traffic until 1990 when Sherman Highway (now FM 428) was widened and the bridge was bypassed. It was repurposed as a pedestrian bridge and remains in its original location as a part of the Ray Roberts Lake State Park Greenbelt. The greenbelt opened on National Trails Day in 1999 as a wilderness recreation area with a 20-mile multiuse trail that follows that banks of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2014