Brownsville-Matamoros Bridge

Brownsville waited until July 4, 1904, for its first railroad, the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico, and its citizens helped pay for it. Together with Bay City's they gave $40,000 toward the line. The railway later held half of the bridge company, and when the span opened to traffic on December 12, 1910, the Brownsville Herald printed a toll table: five cents for a pedestrian, ten for a rider on horseback, twenty for a car and driver. The bridge was widened in 1953 and 1992, and Union Pacific trains still cross it.

What the plaque says

Brownsville-Matamoros Bridge The St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railroad arrived in Brownsville in 1904. The Rio Grande separated the U. S. railway from the Mexican National Railway line. Congressman John Nance Garner (1868-1967), later vice president of the United States, introduced a bill into Congress in 1908 providing for the construction of a bridge spanning the river and connecting the two railways. The Brownsville-Matamoros Bridge Company, owned equally by the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway and the Mexican National Railway, was incorporated in 1909 to handle bridge operations. In 1909 St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway magnate Benjamin F. Yoakum (1859-1929) met with representatives of the Mexican National Railway. An agreement was reached, and Yoakum hired the Foundation Company of New York to build the concrete foundations and the Wisconsin Bridge Company of Milwaukee to erect the steel spans. Work on the structure began in April 1909. The entire structure, a swing bridge of riveted construction, was completed in summer 1910. It was swung open in July of that year for inspection and was photographed by Robert Runyon. By that time, river traffic in the area had ceased, and the swing function was unnecessary. The approximate cost of the bridge, which totaled 227 feet in length, was $225,000. The bridge was renovated for heavier automobile traffic in 1953 and 1992. Although the Brownsville-Matamoros Bridge Company erected an adjacent bridge in 1997 for automobile traffic, the original bridge continues to be used for rail and truck traffic. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stillman House Museum — 0.7 mi
  The 1850 Greek Revival house of Charles Stillman, who laid out Brownsville in 1848 beside the army's Fort Brown, and for a century the home of the Treviño family.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 7.8 mi
  A flat coastal prairie north of Brownsville where Taylor's army and Arista's Army of the North fought the first major battle of the Mexican War on May 8, 1846, now interpreted from both sides.
• Port Isabel Lighthouse State Historic Site — 22 mi
  A 72-foot brick tower finished in 1852 for the Brazos Santiago shipping lane, dark from 1905 until a reproduction lens was lit in 2022, and the only Texas lighthouse open to the public.
• Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge — 25 mi
  A coastal refuge set up in 1946 for wintering redhead ducks, with 417 bird species recorded and, by the Fish and Wildlife Service's account, the largest ocelot population in the United States.

More markers nearby

• Convent of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament — 0.6 mi
• J.T. Canales — 0.7 mi
• Bagdad-Matamoros, C.S.A. — 0.7 mi
• Home of Charles Stillman, 1810-1875 — 0.7 mi