'Bridging the past: Icon of ghost town may be moved' by Jeanne Williams/Temple Daily Telegram

Bridging the past: Icon of ghost town may be moved

by Jeanne Williams

Temple Daily Telegram - August 18, 2008

The iron truss bridge that spans Little River may be

moved a half mile from the river crossing to the

Bryant Station Cemetery. (Shirley Williams/Telegram)

BRYANT STATION - Ghost town. Omit the word “town,” and one might have a description of a

typical Texas 19th Century township that bloomed, seeded and blew away when the

railroads laid tracks elsewhere.

Dead villages seem to lose their identities over time. Those searching for a ghost town

usually have little more than a graveyard, microfilmed newspapers of bygone days and a

page in a historical society volume to substantiate that a parcel of Texas real estate

once supported tenants other than mesquite, grass burrs, prickly pear cactus and wild

animals.

While the Bryant Station Bridge sprang up several decades after the Bryant Station

township came and went, the rusty skeleton of an iron truss bridge built in 1909 has

kept this community in the news.

Bryant Station was never the colloquial wide space in the road. People still live in the

Bryant Station community, and the bridge is its icon.

The community - named in honor of Maj. Benjamin F. Bryant, a Battle of San Jacinto

veteran appointed by Texas President Sam Houston as an Indian agent in Milam County -

originated as an Indian trading post, and blossomed into a pioneer village of 260

people.

Northwest of Cameron on County Road 106, Bryant Station in its prime was a commercial

center of the region with homes, stores, a Masonic lodge, blacksmith shops, a school,

churches, stagecoach route and U.S. post office from 1848 to 1874, a biographical sketch

of the community by Denton Bryant states. Bryant Station faded after the railroad

established a line through Buckholts.

In the two-volume publication by Norinne Holder Holman, “170 Years of Cemetery Records

in Milam County,” the Bryant Station Cemetery is the burial site of close to 100

pioneers from the area. Benjamin Bryant and his first wife were buried in the cemetery

but were reinterred at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.

Now, these two tangible, remaining links to the community’s past - Bryant Station Bridge

delegated in 2003 as a pedestrian walkway 40 feet above the Little River, and the Bryant

Station Cemetery, situated in a secluded lot off the main county road - are chief

elements of a plan to benefit both.

Bryant Station’s most famous residents of today, bamboo farm entrepreneurs Kinder

Chambers and his wife Mary Len Chambers, are rallying volunteers to establish a Bryant

Station Cemetery Association, which is being chartered for the specific purpose of

maintaining the cemetery and moving the Bryant Station Bridge to span a dry creek that

cuts through the cemetery road.

The old bridge was replaced in 2003 by a new $593,660 concrete structure, with the plan

that Milam County would maintain for five years the iron model for pedestrian traffic

hoping an individual or organization would “adopt” the bridge and have it relocated to

another site for proper preservation and re-use.

The antique Sugar Loaf Bridge in east Milam County was restored as a historical relic

and is open to pedestrian traffic. In 1999, a Federal Highway Administration grant of

$25,000 funded the Brushy Creek Bridge’s 25-mile move from the Thorndale area to

Cameron’s Wilson-Ledbetter Park, where it stands as a pedestrian walkway.

Pragmatists and supporters of historical preservation, the Chambers couple believes two

problems could be solved by moving the Bryant Station bridge, which would save an

example of early 20th Century bridge architecture for future generations to enjoy and

open the cemetery road to vehicle and pedestrian traffic by restoring the structure.

The five years of Bryant Station Bridge maintenance requirement, as outlined in the

county’s bridge replacement agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation, has

expired, but Precinct 1 Commissioner Clifford Whiteley said county crews still make

repairs. Looming are liability issues for a past-its-prime antique bridge open to

pedestrian traffic.

“Boards on this bridge are getting tattered, so really and truly it should be closed,”

Whiteley said. “Someone could get hurt and we don’t want that. We don’t want anybody to

step through a board.”

Whiteley, who retires from office Dec. 31, hopes the cemetery association plan emerges

as a viable answer to the bridge’s future.

“We are not going to rush in there and demolish the bridge by any means, because the

metal part of the bridge is sound,” he said.

Once the cemetery association is incorporated, the organization would pursue

preservation grants, said Chambers, adding that he is very serious about getting the

bridge moved.

“We just felt something had to be done,” Chambers said. “We couldn’t bear to see that

old bridge destroyed.”

He has no idea how much money would be needed to move the bridge less than a half mile

from its Little River crossing to the cemetery road, he said.

Chambers met with the Milam County Commissioners Court on Monday to advise that a

cemetery association was being established, and would work toward adopting the bridge

for restoration and future use.

“We just need to do the paperwork and get the organization up and going,” he said. “We

are taking responsibility for that and hopefully we will get other people.”

Dr. Lucile Estell, Milam County Historical Commission chairwoman, said preservation of

the county’s rural antique bridges is vital because “they are just like any other

historical items, when that bit of history is gone, it’s gone. They are irreplaceable.

There is no way to put a money value on them. They are as much a part of our heritage as

buildings.”

With the National Park Service’s development of the El Camino Real de los Tejas - the

King’s Highway, the major network of trails that stretched across the state when Texas

was a Spanish colony - the preservation of antique bridges is even more crucial, Dr.

Estell said.

“As the trail develops, that is going to be money in the coffers,” said Dr. Estell,

referring to future tourism opportunities. “These old bridges are going to be a part of

that.”

All articles from the Temple Daily Telegram are published with the permission of the
Temple Daily Telegram.
All credit for this article goes to
Jeanne Williams and the Temple Daily Telegram
Photos by Shirley Williams -
Temple Daily Telegram photographer