Oak Forest Bridge

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Back in October of 1913, the commissioners of Gonzales County sat down and signed a contract with a firm called A.A. Alsbury and Company.

The job: build a bridge over the Guadalupe River. Now the Guadalupe is not a creek you wade across on a dare, and the folks living out in the rural communities of Oak Forest and Monthalia, both of them established back in the 19th century, needed a reliable way to get from one to the other. So Alsbury and Company got to work.

They reached all the way up to Iowa, drawing on a Parker through truss design from the Ottumwa Bridge Company, and they built that thing solid, with Pratt trusses running along either side of the main span. The whole structure came in at a hundred and forty feet long. By February of 1914, it was done.

Horses, wagons, neighbors, commerce, all of it rolling across the Guadalupe right where Gonzales County needed it. Now here's where the story takes a turn. That bridge outlasted the era that built it.

The Texas Department of Transportation eventually relocated the main span, and in 2004 it was set down above Kerr Creek, right here. Same iron, same trusses, same Parker design from Ottumwa, Iowa. Only the water underneath it changed.

Today it's part of the community's trail system, no longer carrying wagons but still carrying people, and still standing as a reminder of the early transportation that stitched this part of Texas together. Some bridges just refuse to be finished.

What the marker says

In October 1913, Gonzales County commissioners contracted with A.A. Alsbury & Company to construct a bridge over the Guadalupe River. Completed by February 1914, it connected the rural communities of Oak Forest and Monthalia, both established in the 19th century. A.A. Alsbury & Company utilized a Parker through truss design of the Ottumwa Bridge Company of Iowa for the bridge, which was originally 140 feet long and included Pratt trusses on either side of the main span. The Texas Department of Transportation relocated the main span to this site above Kerr Creek in 2004, and it now serves as an element of the community's trail system and as a reminder of early transportation. (2005)