Main Street Bridges

The first bridge is part of why Salado is a legal town. According to George W. Tyler's county history, residents crossed on stepping stones and chained foot-logs, and a mill dam built in 1866 backed water over the rocks and made things worse. Salado incorporated in early 1867, with Judge O. T. Tyler as mayor, partly to solve it. Bonds sold to townspeople and subscriptions raised about $2,500 for a wire-cable suspension footbridge designed and built by local men. It hung some twenty feet above the creek and, Tyler recalled, swayed enough to frighten timid walkers.

What the plaque says

Main Street Bridges A number of bridges have been built over Salado Creek on Main Street since 1870. After the town of Salado was laid out in 1859, citizens crossed the creek using various combinations of rocks and logs. When local citizens and students at Salado College began to demand that a proper bridge be constructed across the creek, town officials voted to issue bonds to fund the project. The first bridge, built in 1868-69, was constructed by local volunteers. The cable wire suspension footbridge, with cedar crossbars and a wooden plank floor, was destroyed in a 1900 flood. The second bridge, a larger structure which would accommodate wagon as well as foot travel, was an iron bridge built by the King Bridge Company in 1892. Located a few yards west of the suspension footbridge, it rested on piers of rock and mortar, and was destroyed in a flood in 1913. Replaced a year later, the duplicate bridge was washed away in a 1921 flood. A concrete bridge was built across the creek in 1922. Anchored with reinforced steel set into the rock creek bed, it proved to be a more permanent solution than previous efforts to bridge the stream and continues to be a focal point in the town. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 16 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 23 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 25 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.

More markers nearby

• Salado — steps away
• Salado Creek — steps away
• Davis Mill — steps away
• Kate Crawford and Zachary Clay Taylor — steps away