DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker on Main Street in Salado tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, you'd think crossin' a creek would be a simple enough proposition. But Salado Creek had other ideas.
The town of Salado was laid out in 1859, and from that day forward, folks needed to get across the water on Main Street. For a while, they made do — rocks here, a log there, whatever combination seemed sturdy enough to keep your boots dry. Citizens made do with it.
Students at Salado College made do with it. And then, eventually, everybody stopped making do with it. When local citizens and students at Salado College began to demand a proper bridge, town officials voted to issue bonds to fund the project.
And so the work began. The first bridge was built in 1868 and 1869, put together by local volunteers. It was a cable wire suspension footbridge — cedar crossbars, a wooden plank floor.
You can almost hear it swayin'. It lasted a good while, too, until a flood in 1900 came through and destroyed it. So they built again.
The second bridge was a bigger structure, an iron bridge built by the King Bridge Company in 1892. This one could handle wagon travel as well as foot traffic, and it rested on piers of rock and mortar, sitting a few yards west of where that old suspension footbridge had stood. More substantial.
More serious. And still — a flood in 1913 destroyed it. Now here's where Salado Creek really starts to make its point.
They replaced that iron bridge a year later with a duplicate — same design, same ambition. And in 1921, a flood washed it away too. Three bridges.
Three floods. The creek was keepin' score. In 1922, they tried something different.
A concrete bridge, anchored with reinforced steel set directly into the rock creek bed. No more resting on the mercy of mortar and hope. And that bridge — that one held.
It continues to be a focal point in the town of Salado to this day. Sometimes the land teaches you what it needs, one flood at a time. Salado just took a few lessons to get the message across.
What the marker says
A number of bridges have been built over Salado Creek on Main Street since 1870. After the town of Salado was laid out in 1859, citizens crossed the creek using various combinations of rocks and logs. When local citizens and students at Salado College began to demand that a proper bridge be constructed across the creek, town officials voted to issue bonds to fund the project. The first bridge, built in 1868-69, was constructed by local volunteers. The cable wire suspension footbridge, with cedar crossbars and a wooden plank floor, was destroyed in a 1900 flood. The second bridge, a larger structure which would accommodate wagon as well as foot travel, was an iron bridge built by the King Bridge Company in 1892. Located a few yards west of the suspension footbridge, it rested on piers of rock and mortar, and was destroyed in a flood in 1913. Replaced a year later, the duplicate bridge was washed away in a 1921 flood. A concrete bridge was built across the creek in 1922. Anchored with reinforced steel set into the rock creek bed, it proved to be a more permanent solution than previous efforts to bridge the stream and continues to be a focal point in the town. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1936