1931 Free Bridge Controversy

The standoff at Denison was the last piece of a larger plan. The Texas State Library says Texas and Oklahoma engineers built eight bridges along the Red River to replace privately run toll bridges and ferries, with the owners paid for their loss. The Colbert company refused the settlement it was offered. It later said the Texas Highway Commission had promised in July 1930 to buy its bridge for $60,000. The library also credits the dispute with one lasting result: when Interstate 35 was built decades afterward, it says, the road was routed through Gainesville rather than Denison.

What the plaque says

1931 Free Bridge Controversy As a result of late 1920s legislation in Texas and Oklahoma, the two states cooperated on a project to build free highway bridges spanning the Red River to accommodate rapidly increasing highway traffic. One of these bridges was near Colbert Bridge, a toll bridge descended from the mid-19th century Colbert's Ferry. When the Free Bridge was ready to open in early July 1931, the Red River Bridge Company, operators of Colbert Bridge, obtained a federal restraining order against the opening of the Free Bridge until contractual payments had been made to compensate the company for their anticipated loss. Texas Governor Ross Sterling complied, but Oklahoma Governor William Murray, who was not a party to the contract between the Texas Highway Commission and the Red River Bridge Company, asked Governor Sterling to join him in protesting the injunction. Sterling refused. Murray ordered the removal of barricades erected by the Texas Highway Commission. For twelve hours, traffic flowed freely across the bridge. By July 17, Texas Rangers guarded the southern side. Oklahoma highway crews rerouted traffic from Colbert Bridge to Preston Bridge several miles away and dismantled the approach to the Colbert Bridge from Oklahoma. As tensions came close to breaking in the summer heat, the injunction was suspended; the Texas Rangers opened the bridge on Labor Day, 1931. It served until 1995, when it was replaced by a new structure. A portion of the Free Bridge was placed in a park in Colbert, Oklahoma, about two miles north. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower State Park — 3.7 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 4.9 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 12 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 14 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Colbert's Ferry — steps away
• Colbert's Ferry (Butterfield Overland Mail) — 1.1 mi
• Red River Bridge — 3.0 mi
• Colbert's Ferry — 3.1 mi