COLUMN: Bridge linked merchants to SW Oklahoma trade | Opinion

The reconstruction of the Route 66 “pony” truss bridge at Bridgeport will price taxpayers about $22 million.

It’s an iconic piece of Americana that Route 66 boosters hope to refurbish by 2026 in time for the one centesimal anniversary of the Mother Road. My fellow cyclists and I’ve crossed the Pony Bridge and plenty of others on Route 66.

It’s thrilling to see some public funding within the western a part of the route the place usually we had to inquire concerning the whereabouts of the highway itself.

That 3,893-foot bridge throughout the Canadian River was inbuilt 1934.

Closer to house, building started 110 years in the past this month on one other Canadian River bridge.

The Norman toll bridge at Adkins ferry crossing was a lot shorter however equally as wanted as merchants started envisioning car site visitors from communities to the south and west.

Noble had a suspension bridge constructed earlier than the flip of the century. Purcell adopted with an all-wooden bridge linking the city to Lexington.

But each of these bridges had been misplaced within the nice flood of 1904. The river had but to be dammed upstream, and torrential rains introduced particles that ripped the bridges aside.

Norman determined it may do higher and set out to construct a metal bridge that might face up to upstream rains.

Purcell’s bridge was rebuilt in 1911, however Noble’s span stays however a footnote in that Cleveland County city’s historical past.

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The late historian John Womack, writing in “Cleveland County Oklahoma Historical Highlights,” stories Norman taxpayers overwhelmingly accepted a $20,000 bond to pay half of the Adkins Crossing bridge’s price with the rest coming from stockholders within the Norman Bridge Company, a brand new company shaped to help the undertaking.

The Kansas City Bridge Co. was chosen to construct the two,200-foot construction that included eight, 159-foot spans of bolstered overhead metal with the stability pile trestle.

Womack writes that the bridge building drew as a lot pleasure as the primary University of Oklahoma buildings.

The 42-inch metal piers had been pushed down into onerous shale and the rest of the house stuffed with concrete. The planks had been of thick white oak 15 ft above the river’s regular water degree.

Rancher Edward B. Johnson and his males examined the bridge by driving 290 head of cattle throughout the span on their manner to the stockyards in south Oklahoma City.

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The subsequent day — in a pre-arranged publicity stunt to drum up bridge enterprise — two Army artillery regiments from Ft. Sill traveled from their encampment at Andrews Park.

At the bridge, awaiting the 300 males and 500 horses, was an Oklahoma City photographer with a wide-angle lens. Those photographs bought for $1.50 every.

The bridge was making a distinction to Norman merchants. McClain County farmers now had a simple route to trade in Norman.

But all good issues should come to an finish, Womack writes. A headrise in 1920 broken the south finish of the bridge.

Less than a 12 months later and earlier than the south finish may very well be repaired, one other headrise worn out 20 of the picket spans.

The state freeway division took management of the bridge in 1927 and operated it for the following 28 years.

Later, as Interstate 35 took form, a superior bridge was constructed west of the construction to carry new, heavier masses.

Treasure hunters can nonetheless discover remnants of the previous bridge that boosted Norman’s place from small faculty city to bustling trade middle greater than a century in the past.