One
of East Texas’ best known bridges
is up for sale, but so far there are no takers.
Stretching across the
Neches River, which separates Angelina and
Trinity County, the Texas Highway 94 bridge has been in place since 1936, making
it more than seventy years old.
The Texas Department of Transportation
calls it “a historic bridge” because it is included in the National Register of historic Places. The structure is about 27 feet wide and 1,588 feet long.
The state agency, which wants to replace the bridge with a modern facility, advertised
the bridge for sale last year, but Robert Allen of the agency’s Lufkin
office said there were no buyers, even though the state offered “limited financial
assistance” with the relocation.
Allen said a buyer would not have been
able to use the bridge for vehicles, only for pedestrians. A priority would have
been that the bridge remain open to the public in some manner.
The Highway
94 bridge is no lightweight.
Made of concrete and steel I-beams, the old
bridge has supported millions of cars and trucks traveling across the river between
Lufkin and Groveton
during its more than seven decades.
The
bridge’s location is also unique.
Because Angelina County was a “dry”
county during much of the bridge’s existence, Trinity County entrepreneurs built
a cluster of taverns and liquor stores on the western end of the bridge and for
years enjoyed a thriving trade with Lufkin
residents.
Until Angelina County went “wet” in recent years, the Highway
94 cluster was the closest place Lufkinites could pick up a six-pack of beer or
a bottle of wine.
More than a few automobiles driven by drunken Lufkinites
left scrapes on the old Highway 94 bridge as they made their way back to Lufkin.
On
Saturday nights, you could always find a Texas highway trooper poised on the Angelina
County side of the bridge, waiting for inebriated drivers. “In those days, we
could always issue enough citations on Highway 94 every Saturday night to pay
for our salaries,” joked a retired trooper.
Today, the establishments
on the west side of the river have fallen on hard times because beer and wine
are sold freely in Lufkin.
The
Highway 94 bridge isn’t the only one owned by Texas that’s looking for a buyer.
The
Texas Highway 84 bridge crossing the Sabine River between Haslam, a sawmill ghost
town, and Logansport in Louisiana, is also up for sale.
But, like the
Highway 94 structure over the Neches River,
no one seems to want a used bridge. |
