100 Years Ago: The Free Bridge, the Dollarway, and Arkansas Roads, Part III
By David Trulock
Steamboats and steam-locomotive railroads were the
main forms of transportation in Arkansas in the latter part of the 19th
century and early part of the 20th century. Navigable rivers were considered “highways”
for both freight and passengers, as can be seen from a promotional booklet
titled “Pine Bluff and Jefferson County—The World’s Fair Edition,” published by
the Jefferson County Bureau of Agriculture, Manufacture and Immigration for the
1893 Chicago World’s Fair:
The Arkansas river, taking its rise in the Rocky
Mountains of Colorado, flows in a southeasterly course a distance of 2,000
miles to the Mississippi river; it passes diagonally through the state, and it,
with the White, Red, Black, Washita, Saline and other rivers, affords navigable
highways in the State of over 3,500 miles, or greater than the waterways of any
other State of the Union.
Although rivers were the first major arteries of
transportation in Arkansas, they became impediments to transportation as
railroads and roads were built. Railroads,
of course, came before good roads, so it’s not surprising that the first
permanent bridges across the Arkansas River were railroad bridges, starting in
1873 with the Baring Cross bridge at Little Rock. Ten years later, the Rob Roy bridge opened near
Pine Bluff on what was later the Cotton Belt Route (St. Louis Southwestern). It was the first bridge across the Arkansas
River in Jefferson County—not counting short-lived pontoon bridges for
wagons—and is still in use, with a lift span operated remotely by a Union
Pacific dispatcher in Omaha, Nebraska.
One of the earliest arguments in favor of a
permanent wagon bridge across the Arkansas River at Pine Bluff was presented in
a letter to the editor of the Pine Bluff
Commercial on October 10, 1889. In
keeping with the practice of the time—a practice now common on the Internet—the
writer wasn’t required to use his or her real name, signing the letter instead
with the initial “B,” as in bridge.
“The idea of a first-class city depending on an
antiquated ferry boat for the transferring of hundreds of wagon loads of cotton
and country produce to our market is simply absurd,” wrote B. “Take our rival, Little Rock, who has two
very fine bridges across the river at that point and is now making a vigorous
fight for a third, and here we are, with almost absolutely no connection with
the rich plantations across the river … .
It is true the ferry owner is making money, but is it not better that we
should establish a bridge and benefit hundreds? … The board of trade and our
merchants generally should endorse this article and take action on it.”
The Commercial
printed its own editorial endorsement of the bridge idea the next day, but also
noted that funding for construction could be a problem: “It is true our city’s finances are not the
best. The county, however, is entirely
out of debt, and it does seem that in a matter of such vital importance there
should be some way of getting the funds necessary to construct the bridge.”
A week later the city’s morning paper, the Pine Bluff Graphic, in a typical
counterpoint to the afternoon Commercial,
recommended that a large ferry boat powered by a steam engine be established
downstream from the city near the Rob Roy bridge, pointing out that any wagon bridge
built from downtown Pine Bluff to Boyd’s Point on the north bank of the river
would be subject to the capricious nature of the river in that area.
As it turned out, disagreements on these two
problems— whether taxes should be levied to finance a bridge, and whether a
bridge should be built across the river’s hairpin curve at Pine Bluff—meant
that small ferry boats would continue to serve Jefferson County and Pine Bluff
for the next 25 years.
The Free Bridge
In 1905, in response to the previous unfulfilled efforts
to build a bridge, the Jefferson County Quorum Court appointed a bridge
commission to be the legal entity in charge of the construction of a railroad
and wagon bridge. In 1906, a group of
Pine Bluff businessmen formed the North and South Railroad. Investors in the new company agreed to commit
$20,000 toward building a railroad and wagon bridge over the Arkansas River
north of Pine Bluff. However, the bridge commission still made no progress on
how to finance the bulk of the cost of bridge, and no action was taken at the
time.
In 1911, with help from the bridge commission, Senator
H. Kemp Toney of Pine Bluff was able to get a bill passed by the Arkansas
Legislature that made all of Jefferson County into a special Bridge District
that could levy taxes in order to repay debt incurred in building a bridge. Some of Jefferson County’s largest landowners
opposed the bill and tried to persuade Governor George Donaghey not to sign
it. After hearing arguments for and
against the bill, Donaghey signed it.
For the next two years, a series of lawsuits
prevented any action from being taken toward building the bridge. In each case, the Arkansas Supreme Court
decided in favor of the Bridge District.
Finally, one of the main opponents of the bridge, T. J. Collier of
Altheimer, was elected to the Quorum Court and managed to get the bridge question
on the December 2, 1913 election ballot.
The vote was 1,177 to 1,011 in favor of the bridge.
Construction of the bridge started in January 1914,
with heavy equipment and iron girders being brought from Memphis on barges
towed by steam-powered towboats. During 1914, with all significant travel to
and from the construction site being done via the river, and with the workers living
in an encampment on the north side of the bridge site, very little attention
was given to building a road on either end of the bridge.
Construction of the bridge went quickly, and on
Thursday, November 5th, several hundred residents of Pine Bluff were treated to
a tour. They went by boat—barges towed
by towboats—six miles up the Arkansas River in order to see and walk on the
nearly completed Free Bridge.
“Fully 500 people—half of them ladies—inspected the
free bridge this morning as guests of the Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron
Company, the builders,” reported the Commercial. “Two boats with barges conveyed them to the
bridge site. A moving picture man
photographed the crowd as it boarded the boats at the Tennessee street landing. The visitors were placed ashore on the south
side of the river, mounted the bridge platform and walked to within one span of
the north side of the river.” (The one part of the bridge remaining to be
finished was the lift span, on the north side.)
At that time, there had been disagreement as to
whether the contractor was responsible for building the approaches and abutments. The original specifications were for the work
to be done by the contractor, but it was not specifically stated in the contract. On the day before local residents were given
their tour of the bridge, the Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Works announced
it would do the earthwork necessary for the approaches and abutments, with
payment to be decided by later arbitration.
The work took longer than expected, perhaps due to
a greater amount of rainfall than average during the time period. This may have also been the reason roadwork
wasn’t done, even though the bridge itself had been completed. The result was
that in March 1915 Jefferson County had a very substantial modern monument in
the middle of nowhere: a railroad, wagon, and automobile bridge that cost
nearly $650,000 and was not yet accessible by railroad or auto, although
possibly on dry ground wagons could have made the trip. (As mentioned in Part I of this series, a
rail line was never connected to the bridge and the tracks in the center
section were taken out in 1926.)
The bridge itself, however, was ready for an
official inspection. On April 1st, the
resident engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers in Little Rock, Major Alfred
B. Putnam, an 1899 graduate of the United States Military Academy, gave it his
approval. The next morning, the Graphic quoted
Major Putnam as saying, “The bridge is one of the best in the country, and it
is most certainly the best that spans the Arkansas River.” Coming from an experienced engineer, this
statement can be interpreted as literally true and not an exaggeration (or an
April Fool’s joke).
But Arkansas roads in general were still some of
the worst in the country, and that included the nearly nonexistent road leading
to the Free Bridge. When the Graphic reported on April 10 that some
residents on the north side of the bridge had driven across it and into Pine
Bluff (whether in wagons or autos wasn’t stated), it also mentioned that tree
stumps were still in the road: “There
were still some stumps to be blown out of the right of way and grading and
ditching yet to be done.”
Thus the Free Bridge opened a hundred years ago,
although for people living on the Pine Bluff side it was in the beginning a
bridge to nowhere that was nearly inaccessible, except by water.
(Most
of the information for this article was taken from Saracen’s Country: Some Southeast Arkansas History, by James W. Leslie, published by Rose
Publishing Co. in 1974. Additional information came from reviewing the news
articles cited in the book, thanks to microfilm collection at the Pine
Bluff/Jefferson County Library. A fourth
article in this series is planned for the next issue of the Quarterly. Comments
from readers regarding the Free Bridge are welcomed and may be referenced or
quoted in the upcoming article.)
Printed in the Jefferson County Historical Quarterly, Spring 2015.
