Lost Bridge - a little history

[Quillback]

The Weekly Vista has a story about how the name Lost Bridge came about and here's a summary:

The folks living in the Garfield area wanted a more direct route to Eureka Springs, a bridge was proposed by the county to be built at Fishtrap Ford in Fishtrap Hollow.  A contract was awarded for a Tennessee contracting company to build an arched cement bridge, 318 feet long, 16 feet wide and 40 feet above the river.  The Tenn. company won with a bid of $24,125.  

Work was started in June of 1929, material were brought to Garfield by train and hauled on a narrow wagon road to the bridge site.

The bridge was completed in October 1929.

When the bridge was completed there was not funding available to build a road to it, so it became the "Lost Bridge".

The bridge opened in 1934 once funding had been found to build the approaches to the bridge.

On May 7, 1943 heavy rain caused the White river to flood, a log jam and flood waters caused the bridge to collapse.

A low water crossing was built in the aftermath of the bridge collapse and was in use up until the time the site was flooded by the rising water of Beaver Lake in 1964.

Pic of the completed bridge, in it you can see the approaches have not been completed:

 

Low water bridge, to the left is the washed out bridge:

[jdmidwest]

Interesting how things were  done back then.  Now it would be many millions, poorly designed, and obsolete by the time it was finished several years later after conception.

[tjm]

Well it was poorly designed, it collapsed in the first major flood, and the inflation would bring the cost to ~$444,090 in today's money for a bridge on a dirt road; so not much has changed.

I remember seeing that broken bridge the summer before the dam was built, and hearing the  story. Mom's cousin took us down there for a day of touring the river from there to War Eagle for the last time. A long hot day over mostly gravel roads, must have been ~125-150 miles round trip, very scenic and lots of stops for pictures and rock collection as she was an amateur geologist and avid rockhound. I liked that river valley  better as it was then than as it is now.

[Terrierman]

12 hours ago, jdmidwest said:

Interesting how things were  done back then.  Now it would be many millions, poorly designed, and obsolete by the time it was finished several years later after conception.

I think a collapsed bridge indicates it was poorly designed.  We don't build bridges where there aren't roads these days either....  I'll take today thanks.

[tjm]

 

1 hour ago, Terrierman said:

We don't build bridges where there aren't roads these days either.

Not so sure about that, as I can think of several instances of bridges built adjacent to existing bridges and the roads being moved to the new bridge after completion. The location being at "Fishtrap Ford" implies there was an existing road nearby the proposed bridge, even if it was a narrow dirt road, as named fords only occurred  where roads existed. I can even think of one place where the road bed for a US highway and bridge approaches  was completed ~40-50 years ago and the bridge was never built, nor the road built. Elections change those kind of plans. And 1929 was the beginning of a decade of the "Great Depression" which along with the "Great Wars" gave my folks generation the moniker of "greatest generation".  I think it's remarkable that they found funding to improve/build the road approaches in 1934, which was not only the middle of the depression but also the beginning of he dust bowl years.