DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker's got the story, and I'm just the one bringin' it to you across the miles — here's what it says about the Rusk Footbridge. Now, five hundred and forty-six feet long and four feet wide — that doesn't sound like much until you picture a rainy Texas season turning the valley into something you do not want to cross. That's exactly what the folks living east of that valley were dealing with, and in 1861 somebody did something about it.
They built a footbridge. Simple as that, and necessary as anything. It was the means — the marker uses that word, means, and it earns it — the means for residents east of the valley to get to town when the rains came down and the low ground turned against them.
Then comes 1889, and a man named T. H. Barnes steps into the story.
Barnes was an engineer at the time, and his hands were already full building a place called New Birmingham — a town to the east that the marker notes, with a certain quiet Texas finality, is now a ghost town. But Barnes rebuilt that footbridge, and he did it right. The city of Rusk kept it going after that, maintaining the bridge all the way through 1950.
And then — well, things lapse. Years pass. But here's where the story earns its ending: when the time came to restore the Rusk Footbridge in 1969, they went back to Barnes's plans.
The engineer who rebuilt it in 1889 was still, in a manner of speaking, on the job. Five hundred and forty-six feet of footbridge, four feet wide, still crossing that valley — built on the word of a man who also built a ghost town, which ought to tell you something about what lasts and what doesn't.
What the marker says
(546 feet long; 4 feet wide) First built 1861 as the means for residents east of valley to get to town during rainy seasons. Rebuilt in 1889 by T. H. Barnes, engineer building New Birmingham (now ghost town, to the east). Maintained by city of Rusk until 1950. Restored 1969 on plans by Barnes.