Careful on that there Bridge!

A photograph published in The Daily Oklahoman in July 1931 looks at the Red River bridge between Love (OK) and Cooke (TX) counties from the southern side. Bad idea to attempt a crossing! (OHS)

Opened in 1931 and promptly unusable, the Red River bridge between Love and Cooke counties looked good, but that's about it.

1931 was a banner year for the construction of free bridges across the Red River between Oklahoma and Texas. Complaints against toll bridge companies led Oklahoma's state government to receive federal funds to build modern highways that spanned across the state, and since the Red River east of the 100th Meridian was considered Oklahoma's domain, the highway construction projects included erecting bridges.

Texas, however, was not too keen on the federal highways, as they necessitate free bridges (because they were built with public funds -- get it?) and the state had entered decades-long and exclusive contracts with toll bridge companies who happened to be owned by rich and well-connected people.

This disagreement between the use of free bridges and toll bridges brought upon the famous "Red River Bridge War" between Oklahoma and Texas at Bryan and Grayson counties. The bridge between Love and Cooke counties, however, had a somewhat different tale.

The Red River between Love and Cooke counties is incredibly scenic: gentle rolling hills, some steeper than others, are with post oaks and prairies. The Texas side is steeper than the Oklahoma side, and the southern shore of the Red River dips before it climbs. Though it's not the most even terrain, Oklahoma's construction crews erected its Love County bridge at the Red River relatively level and efficiently by 1931. They found that Texas was not completing its fair share of the highway project when the fill dirt on the southern shore was five feet lower than the concrete roadway. Thus, driving across the bridge would be either suicidal or homicidal, take your pick. This forced traffic to be re-routed onto the toll bridge to the new bridge's east.

William Murray, Oklahoma's governor who self-styled himself as "Alfalfa Bill" to appeal to progressive farmers, offered his construction crews and his own state's funding to Texas because he considered the Lone Star State pretty much comically inept.

To ward off another embarrassing "bridge war," the city of Gainesville and the Gainesville Red River Toll Bridge Company offered their own solutions. The toll bridge company took a quick buy-out from its contract with Texas when audits threatened to prove that it had been overcharging. Gainesville voters approved a bond measure to complete the construction of their highway approach. US 77, aka the Hobby Highway, was thus completed to the Red River by extending the highway through town via Grand Avenue.

The Daily Oklahoman had this to say about the Red River bridge on the Gainesville (Cooke County, Texas) side: It's a fine span, but try and use it on the Texas side: It's a fine span, but try and use it on the Texas side: "This picture shows the Texas end of the Gainesville-Marietta bridge. The white line across the concrete abutment indicates the point to which an earthen fill, not shown i the picture, has settled below the floor level. Thus, while the Oklahoma approach is complete, motorists using the bridge would need an elevator to negotiate the five-foot drop from bridge floor to the top of the Texas fill."

A USGS map from 1902, with modern roads superimposed, shows that the original toll bridge road is today's Weaver Street in Gainesville.

The USGS map from 1943 tells federal highway 77 entering town from the Red River via an extension of Grand Avenue

Read up on the history of the toll bridge at Gainesville in RRH's book, Stark Ranch of Cooke County: History that spans the Red River. Click on the photo that will take you to its Amazon page.