Red River Diggers

In September of 1931, the toll bridge that spanned the Red River between Love County, Oklahoma and Cooke County, Texas at the former Sacra's Ferry site closed for good in favor of the free bridge a mile upstream. The road to get to the toll bridge through Gainesville is Grand Avenue, but the free bridge served state highway 40, which we now all know and love as U.S. 77 and Interstate 35. Okay, maybe "love" isn't quite the right word.

The Gainesville Red River Bridge Company, which owned the toll bridge at Sacra's Ferry, filed an injunction to stop traffic on the free bridge. Unlike the opening of the free bridge between Colbert, Oklahoma and Denison, Texas in July of 1931, however, this injunction did not create a public-relations "war" between the governors of the states.

The argument in Gainesville rested on the problem that the road bed for SH 40/ Route 77 was two miles west of downtown Gainesville, thus bypassing the city and creating worry about its future commercial traffic. Further, the governor of Oklahoma discovered that the road bed on the Texas side "had settled approximately five feet below the bridge roadway," and therefore offered to provide Texans with road-building equipment (and the talent to actually use it, ha ha).

This didn't sit to well with some Gainesville citizens, who feared that their city's commerce would suffer. Therefore, they "raised funds by contribution to build the three mile detour from Highway No. 77 to the short, completed section of Highway No. 40." This contribution effectively stopped the problem on both ends: Texas got a decent road, and the highway was built much closer to downtown Gainesville.

If you'd like to read more about the exciting history of ferries, toll bridges, and free bridges, check out the book, "The Stark Ranch of Cooke County, Texas: History that spans the Red River" by John Schmitz, published by Red River Historian Press! It's a great gift for any infrastructure nerd.

You can find the book on my website: https://www.redriverhistorian.com/shop or on Amazon (also on order at independents, Barnes & Noble, etc): https://www.amazon.com/Stark-Ranch-Cooke-County-Texas/dp/1736745719

Found in Cooke County! Aluminum tax token, worth 1/10th of a cent, found just off the Red by Sy! During the Great Depression (1930’s) these would be used for taxing items worth as little as a penny!