Red River Bridge

Garland, US

The Red River Bridge was a truss bridge crossing the Red River at Garland, Arkansas. It carried vehicular traffic from 1931 to 1990 and has since been demolished. The southwest corner of Arkansas was cut off from the rest of the state by the Red River, which was crossed only by ferries and one railr

oad bridge until the twentieth century. The bridge at Garland was designed by state highway engineer Ira G. Hedrick in October 1927 and located along the old military road from El Dorado to Texarkana (later to become part of U.S. Route 82). Hedrick's design included three 300-foot (91 m) through spans of Pennsylvania truss. The winning bid for construction was submitted by the Kansas City Bridge Company, which was given the contract in September 1929. Construction activities for the bridge disturbed traffic through Garland, and this period was marked by conflict between state highway authorities and the city. (The new bridge also threatened the ferry business owned by Garland's Mayor Beasley.) The spans (though not the approaches) were complete by the morning of September 3, 1930, when two dynamite blasts threw the central span from its piers and into the river, doing $150,000 of damage....

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