The Pecos runs more than 900 miles from the mountains of New Mexico, and its last stretch, from below Sheffield to the Rio Grande, is a deep limestone gorge. The Handbook of Texas calls it a long-standing barrier to transportation, and it has kept the lower river from ever being irrigated. Gaspar Castaño de Sosa named it the Río Salado for its salty water, and Mexicans long called it the Río Puerco. In the railroad camps of 1882 it was often said that west of the Pecos there was no law.
Before the middle of the twentieth century, drivers on the road west went down a two-lane switchback to a bridge only 50 feet above the water. That bridge was built in 1923. Floodwater took it in 1954, the year the remnants of Hurricane Alice dropped more than 24 inches of rain near Pandale, upstream, and the Pecos crested at more than 96 feet. Two temporary crossings built after it washed out as well. The present bridge, high above the canyon, opened in 1957.
The overlook at its northeast end looks down into the gorge; out of sight around a bend upstream, the railroad's high bridge of 1944 still carries trains. The river at the bottom is higher than it once was, backed up by Amistad Reservoir. There is a picnic area, and three historical markers stand at the pullout: on the bridges, on the river in literature and folklore, and on a fight in 1875.
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