South Llano Crossing

Upstream from the crossing, the river runs past a state park on land once ranched by Warner Buck, who gave it to the state in 1977. The park, four miles south of Junction on U.S. Highway 377, opened in 1990 on 507 acres with 1.5 miles of river frontage. About 440 acres are bottomland heavily wooded with pecan trees, where hundreds of wild turkeys roost in the fall and feed on the nuts. Facilities include camping and picnic areas, and a hiking trail leads into a 2,000-acre wildlife management area next to the park.

What the plaque says

South Llano Crossing The spanning of the South Llano River has been a major concern for the citizens of Junction since the town's founding in 1876. The original crossing point was located slightly south of the junction of the North and South Llano Rivers. Although earlier bridges existed along this stretch of the river, a bridge built in 1916 accommodated travelers along the transcontinental Old Spanish Trail Highway. When the 1916 bridge became functionally obsolete, another modern bridge was completed in 1937. Joe R. Andrews was killed during the last days of the bridge's construction, in the rush to complete it. Today, the bridge overlooks Lake Junction, created by a dam built in 1965. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kimble County Historical Museum — 1.1 mi
  A free county museum in Junction, the town at the meeting of the North and South Llano, with the papers, photographs and tools of a ranching county.
• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 26 mi
  A limestone cave on the James River where about four million Mexican free-tailed bats raise their young each summer, kept open to visitors by a family's gift.
• Fort McKavett State Historic Site — 31 mi
  The post Sherman called the prettiest in Texas, home to soldiers of all four Buffalo Soldier regiments and then to a town that lived in its buildings until 1973.

More markers nearby

• Burt M. Fleming American Legion Post No. 237 — steps away
• City of Junction — steps away
• Kimble County's First Sawmill — steps away
• Junction's First Waterworks — steps away