Bridgetown

The toll bridge that gave Bridgetown its name ran a mile across the Red River to Tillman County, Oklahoma. Liquor was illegal in the town, but the Handbook of Texas says it could be had with ease almost anywhere, and a bank went up soon after the post office opened. Out in the Northwest Extension pool, Humble's William S. Farish and Gulf's Underwood Nazro urged operators to share pipeline space among the wells. By the Handbook's count Bridgetown was down to 100 people by 1926, and to about eighty, with two businesses, by the late 1940s.

What the plaque says

When the northwest extension of the Burkburnett oil field opened in 1919, prospectors thronged this area. Bridgetown sprang up at the Texas end of a mile-long Red River toll bridge built for oil field traffic. It became the largest and wealthiest of 12 communities that mushroomed in this area during rivalry among major oil companies and independent producers. Lease values rose from $10 to $20,000 an acre. A city of tents, shanties and a few substantial structures, Bridgetown had a long main street with a Mission church at one end and a saloon at the other. Its post office opened July 15, 1920. The population in the early 1920s was estimated at 3,500 to 10,000. Litigation over riverbed oil rights caused the U.S. Supreme Court to station a receiver in the town. He was Frederick A. Delano, uncle of future president Franklin D. Roosevelt. With aid from Texas Rangers, Delano and other leaders invoked law and order. In a few years oil yields diminished, and the jail, theaters, dance halls, and gambling houses vanished. By 1929 only 100 inhabitants remained. By 1931 the bridge was down, the post office closed in 1935. Afterward the site of the makeshift oil "capital" reverted to range and agricultural uses. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 16 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Kell House Museum — 17 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 28 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.

More markers nearby

• Receiver Bridge — 0.6 mi
• Trinity Lutheran Church — 1.5 mi
• Thrift — 2.5 mi
• Northwest Extension Oilfield — 2.5 mi