Waco Suspension Bridge reopens with celebration, symbolic cattle drive

Longhorns cross the Waco Suspension Bridge, signaling the end of the years-long renovation project Saturday downtown. The bridge, built in 1870, had been closed since 2020.

Wacoans crane for a better look as 20 longhorn cattle and a wagon cross the Waco Suspension Bridge as part of Saturday's festivites.

Cowboys, with a wagon in tow, guide 20 longhorn cattle across the Waco Suspension Bridge, symbolic of its origin as a pathway across the Brazos River.

A vintage 1897 wagon was part of the festivities rolling across the Waco Suspension Bridge on Saturday.

A large crowd gathers to the ribbon cutting and take their place along the Waco Suspension Bridge to watch the cattle drive.

Saturday marked the official opening of the Waco Suspension Bridge, unveiling the $12.4 million project the city undertook in 2020 to give the 153-year-old structure new cables, a new deck and a much-needed facelift.

The festivities featured multiple speakers, a ribbon cutting and a cattle drive across the bridge, symbolic of its origin as a connection from the Old West to the new.

Watch now: Saturday marked the official opening of the Waco Suspension Bridge, unveiling the $12.4 million project the city undertook in 2020 to give the 153-year-old structure new cables, a new deck and a much-needed facelift.

Parks and Recreation Director Jonathan Cook welcomed the crowd gathered near the bronze statues. Cook said from weddings to family reunions or just a walk with loved ones across the bridge, the bridge is a piece of downtown that brings people together.

“When I think of the Waco Suspension Bridge, to me it is all about bringing our community together, and this has been something this bridge has done for our community for over 150 years,” Cook said.

Cook said the community has been without the bridge for more than two years, but the project has been in the works for much longer than that. He thanked past and current city management and mayors for paving the way.

“Without their vision to make Waco a great place to live, none of this would’ve been possible,” he said.

The crowd lines up to watch the ribbon cutting as they get ready to line the Waco Suspension Bridge to watch the cattle drive, which officially reopened the bridge to pedestrian traffic for the first time since 2020.

Mayor Dillon Meek spoke next, thanking council members Andrea Barefield, Alice Rodriguez, Josh Borderud and Jim Holmes, who were in attendance, as well as Vicki Mercer from Congressman Pete Sessions’ office, Rep. Doc Anderson and County Commissioner Will Jones.

Meek also thanked Clifton and Betsy Robinson, the philanthropists who installed the bronze cattle statues near the Suspension Bridge and much of the public art around Waco.

Meek said he loves the bridge’s history, serving as a symbol of how the community came together to solve the problem of crossing the Brazos River.

“It’s a real story of strategy and community coming together to solve problems, which I think is so emblematic of what Waco is about,” Meek said.

Attendees hang around the bronze cattle statues near the Waco Suspension Bridge while waiting for real cattle.

When thinking about the symbolism of bridges, Meek said a few words came to mind: connection, progress, overcoming obstacles, innovation, transition and beauty. As Waco became a commercial hub during the 1800s, the Suspension Bridge represented its perseverance in overcoming obstacles, such as the river, and became “a marvel of modern engineering,” serving as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi River when it opened, Meek said.

“Our city is characterized by a thriving and inclusive economy, a community that is deeply committed to providing equal opportunities for all in a bold and pragmatic approach to achieving ambitious goals,” he said. “This is a new era, and it is a testament to our resilience, innovation and forward thinking of all of our citizens.”

Assistant Parks Director Tom Balk, who has overseen the project since the bridge’s needs were identified first in 2016, said there were many steps taken to get to the final unveiling Saturday, and throughout the process nothing could be guaranteed.

“We knew how much we love this bridge and how much it means to our community, but in 2015 we didn’t really know what all the bridge needed,” Balk said. “We just knew that there had been this long-standing tradition of generational care for this structure.”

Cowboys, with a wagon in tow, guide 20 longhorn cattle across the Waco Suspension Bridge, symbolic of its origin as a pathway across the Brazos River.

A group of 20 longhorn cattle crosses the Waco Suspension Bridge Saturday, signaling the end of the yearslong renovation project.

Balk said the city of Waco team and the team from lead engineering firm Patrick Sparks were empowered to take on the project, expecting in the beginning to need new wood decking. However, the crew found the bridge’s cables from 1914 only had about 10 years of use left.

He said as a registered historic national landmark, there were regulations that had to be followed to preserve the bridge’s status, exercising Sparks’ expertise in historic structures.

“I was astounded … We were empowered to do what was necessary to see this bridge through the next 100 years,” Balk said. “… Very technical, but the long and short of it is we needed a new cabling and anchoring system. We were able to successfully anchor this entire structure to bedrock for the first time in over 100 years without compromising any of the brickwork.”

The bridge also got a new decking system and a paint job as part of the overhaul.

Pam Thomason from Historic Waco shared some of the bridge’s history, beginning in 1866 when more than 50 Wacoans formed the Waco Bridge Company in an effort to build the Suspension Bridge near downtown.

“There were only 1,500 people that lived in Waco when they started this plan for this bridge, and they did an amazing job of preparing for this bridge to be a part of the Chisholm Trail and to be the gateway for our city,” Thomason said.

Barbara Jean Merritt shows a photo of her great grandfather, Philipp Beasley, the Waco Suspension Bridge’s first toll keeper, during the reopening ceremony Saturday downtown.

The bridge started as a toll bridge, she said, meant to eventually pay for itself. Thomason presented a photo of the bridge’s first toll keeper, Philipp Beasley, whose great granddaughter Barbara Jean Merritt was in attendance.

Its cables came from the same company in New York that provided the Brooklyn Bridge’s cables, and it was built by engineer Thomas Griffith, “who built the first bridge over the span of the Mississippi River,” Thomason said.

She said the bridge was built using bricks made from the sand of the Brazos River. McLennan County bought the bridge for $75,000, and then sold it to the city of Waco for $1, making it free to cross. Thomason said when the bridge was sold there was a large celebration — similar to Saturday’s excitement — in which Waco pioneer Kate Ross became the first person to cross the free bridge.

After the ceremony, Mayor Meek cut the red ribbon, signifying the official reopening of the bridge. Guests lined the Washington Avenue bridge and Suspension Bridge to watch 20 Longhorn cattle cross the bridge.

“As the first bridge over Brazos and the earliest example of permanent bridge construction, the Waco Suspension Bridge was a major technological feat that influenced Texas bridge building for debates to follow,” the Texas Department of Transportation wrote in a 1996 survey of Texas bridge history. San Antonio and Dallas soon followed up with attempts at engineered metal bridges, but mostly Texans crossed rivers on ferries or rickety wooden bridges.

A photo from about 1890 shows a fence around the toll-keeper's cottage. The brick anchor on the right held cable stays that stabilized the bridge deck. The castellated top of the bridge was removed in 1914 as the towers were reinforced and additional arches were added.

It was especially ambitious for its time and place: a remote frontier village of about 3,000 emerging from the devastation of the Civil War. The wire cables and iron components had to be hauled from New Jersey to Galveston by ship, then by railroad to Bryan, then overland by oxcarts to Waco along dirt roads. The budget was $40,000, but the project ballooned to $144,000.

The photo above is view of the Suspension Bridge taken in the early 1900s, likely from the new Washington Avenue bridge that was built about 1902.

A group of businessmen got a state charter as Waco Bridge Co. in 1866 and sent its president, John Flint, to New York and New Jersey to investigate bridge designs. He picked Thomas Griffith of New York, who had helped design major projects for the company of John A. Roebling (pictured above), the leading engineer of stayed suspension bridges in America and later builder of the 1883 Brooklyn Bridge.

But the oft-repeated local lore that Roebling used it as a model for the Brooklyn Bridge does not hold up. Besides the New Jersey iron, other materials included cedar logs from Chalk Bluff for a substructure and bricks made from pits in East Waco — against the objections of Griffith, who had called for stone masonry.

The cables installed in a 1914 renovation, pictured above, will be replaced as part of a $12.4 million renovation now getting started.

At 475 feet, it was not the longest suspension bridge in America when built, contrary to some local history accounts, but some sources allow that it was the longest in the West. Suspension bridges in Cincinnati and Wheeling, West Virginia, were significantly longer, along with one over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis that Griffith had designed in 1855.

This picture taken by Fred Gildersleeve some years after the 1914 renovation shows high water on the Brazos River. The river was known for damaging floods until dams were built upstream in the second half of the 20th century.

It had a charter giving it 25-year monopoly on bridge crossings within 5 miles. It enforced its rights by driving heavy pilings in the riverbanks to block local fording spots on the Brazos. It successfully sued when McLennan County sought to build a new free bridge nearby.

This photo taken by Fred Gildersleeve before the 1914 renovation of the Suspension Bridge, when the wooden decking support was replaced with steel, the towers were modified and cables were replaced. Over the bridge hangs a sign with the message, "Fine for riding or driving over this bridge faster than a walk."

Tolls from the bridge quickly paid off the project as Waco became a primary river crossing for the north-south travel through Texas, including cattle drives on the Chisholm Trail. The town quickly got a railroad tap line and doubled in size over the next decade.

This photo from about 1900 on the west end of the bridge shows a lively Victorian scene.

Geoff Hunt, an audio and visual curator at the Texas Collection at Baylor University, said the bridge helped make Waco what it is today.

“A lot of people don’t put together the significance of it,” he said. “Looking at it now, people don’t realize how revolutionary and important it was in its day, and that it necessitates the money we’re putting into it now. Future generations will be very pleased we did.”

The bridge company sold the bridge for $75,000 in 1889 to McLennan County, which transferred it to the city of Waco for $1, completing its transition to a free bridge.

This recent photo shows a herd of statue cows at the west end of the Suspension Bridge, commemorating the early days of the Chisholm Trail.

Officials went back and forth on whether to renovate the bridge to accommodate heavier traffic or build a new steel bridge next to the new Washington Avenue bridge (at left), according to newspapers from the time. The renovators won out by 1914, and the city and county hired Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Co. to add a new steel “pony truss” stiffening system, heftier cables, new heavy duty rivets and an extended deck to allow pedestrian traffic, along with additional arches to beef up the now-stuccoed towers.

The bridge continued to be an important crossing for motorized traffic in the 20th century, even after it was damaged by the 1953 tornado. It carried one-way traffic to Taylor Avenue, while the old Interurban Bridge carried traffic to Elm Avenue. The new Franklin Avenue bridge made the bridges unnecessary, and by 1971, the Suspension Bridge had become a footbridge the first property in McLennan County on the National Register of Historic Places.

In the vintage photo above, westbound motorists could take the old interurban bridge to Elm Avenue or the Suspension Bridge to Taylor Street until 1970, around the time this photo was taken. The interurban bridge has been reduced to its pylons, and the Suspension Bridge became a walking bridge.

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