Maxdale Bridge

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Maxdale Bridge. Now, some stories start with a plan, and some stories start with water. This one starts with both.

It's July 1913, and the Bell County Commissioners Court has had enough. Flooding kept hammering this stretch of country, cutting off the Maxdale Community from Killeen, and the court finally said: we are building a bridge. They approved the construction, picked the site, and set things in motion.

You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief from the folks in the Maxdale Community. Almost. Because here is where the story takes its turn.

Before that bridge could even be finished, before it could carry a single wagon across, a flood came through and destroyed it. Gone. The very problem they were trying to solve reached up and swallowed the solution whole.

Now, a lesser court might have reconsidered. But the Bell County Commissioners Court went back to the table. They contracted again, and that word again is doing a lot of work, with Hess and Skinner Engineers, who were acting as agents for the Missouri Valley Bridge Company.

Build us a bridge, they said. And this time, that bridge got built. Completed in 1914, the Maxdale Bridge uses what's called a Parker truss design, a structure engineered to deliver maximum strength right at mid-span, right where the river below would most like to test it.

That's not an accident. That's a lesson learned the hard way, written in iron and sitting right there across the water.

What the marker says

In July 1913, the Bell County Commissioners Court, in response to repeated flooding in this area, approved construction of a bridge at this site to provide access to Killeen for residents of the Maxdale Community. Before it was completed, however, the bridge was destroyed in a flood. The Bell County Commissioners Court contracted again with Hess & Skinner Engineers, agents for the Missouri Valley Bridge Company, to build this bridge. Completed in 1914, the Maxdale Bridge employs a Parker truss design, which allows for maximum strength at mid-span. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1990