Erected in 1939, it is the state’s only remaining state-maintained suspension bridge still carrying traffic, according to Kelly Hoffman, public information officer with the Texas Department of Trans-portation’s bridge division.
Although the bridge is safe, there’s a good reason people call it a swinging bridge, or “swangin’ bridge,” to use vernacular of many Texas natives.
If you drive onto the bridge and stop near the center, you can often feel it sway under you.
And if you choose to walk onto the weathered, 4-by-12-inch timber that makes up the bridge’s driving surface and a pickup truck drives by, it’s tempting to reach for the nearest cable to hang on to as the bridge moves eerily under your feet.
And to hang on is a wise thing since a fall would likely prove fatal, as was the case in 1924 when one of the bridge’s two predecessors collapsed.
According to the Texas Historical Commission, the original bridge, built in 1903, fell when a local family drove cattle across it, killing a boy, his horse and some cattle. A second bridge washed away in a flood in 1936.
Cecil Egger, a lifelong resident of Mills County who will turn 100 this month, was born and raised four miles north of the bridge site and remembers the 1924 accident.
“I knew the little boy that got killed,” he says as he sits on the edge of his bed in his room at the Goldthwaite Senior Health Care Center. He used to work for the boy’s father.
“He was driving cattle across there and the bridge fell through. It killed him and some of the cattle,” he said, although he had forgotten the boy’s name.
According to a document from the Texas Historical Commission, on May 9, 1924, Luther Jernigan and two of his five sons, Malcolm and Raymond, attempted to drive a herd of 85 cattle over the bridge in groups on a rainy day.
“As the last group gathered on the first span of the bridge, the floor turned and slipped off the pier and turned a flip,” according to the document.
“The cattle as well as the horses Mr. Jernigan and his sons were riding fell into the river, and Raymond, age 9, and his horse were killed instantly,” the document read. “Mr. Jernigan was seriously injured and nine head of cattle also perished.”
Malcolm, the other son, was not injured, according to the document. His horse landed feet first in the riverbed and Malcolm rode for help.
Egger is always willing to talk about the bridge. His room at the senior center is sparsely decorated with just some family pictures and a framed photo of the Regency Bridge hanging on the wall.
Egger is a former Mills County judge and county commissioner. He’s not only familiar with the first bridge’s demise, he is also familiar with the current bridge’s construction, having worked on the crew after the second bridge was washed away.
Although he cannot recall many of the details about those days, the memory Egger has of his first day on the job sticks with him.
“I went to work there on the fifth day of July 1939, there at the bridge,” he says of the rebuilding project.
He said that in the early stages of construction, workers had built a narrow footbridge that spanned the river.
“They built a walk over it about 2-foot wide, about 120 foot from the water,” he says. “I went to work that morning and the boss said ‘Can you carry these two buckets of water across there?’
“…There was nothing to hold to on either side and I said, ‘I guess I can.’ And I carried them over the other side,” he said. “There was nothing but the river under me.”
After he got to the other side, he just stood with the buckets in his hands, happy to be safe again.
“The boss over there said, ‘Why don’t you set that water down?’ And I said, ‘Hell, I was so scared I forgot I had it,’” Egger said.
The bridge is located near Regency, which is a small community near Goldthwaite and about halfway between Brownwood and San Saba.
It spans the Colorado River, which serves as the boundary between Mills and San Saba counties.
Paid for by the two counties, the current bridge was constructed by Austin Bridge Co. of Dallas, which used mostly local labor. According to the THC document, 90 percent of the work on the third bridge was done by hand.
In the 1940s, there were dances and social events on the bridge. According to Wallace Johnson, also a former Mills County commissioner, there was at least one marriage there.
Even today, there seems to be a social element to the bridge.
Spend enough time walking the bridge and taking pictures and Alton Watson of the White Wolf Trading Post just might spot you and drive out on his Harley Davidson motorcycle to talk about his late, three-quarter, silverback Alaska tundra wolf he used to travel with.
The camp and store, located on the Mills County side of the bridge, hosts periodic concerts featuring Austin musicians.
Those driving out to the bridge via Goldthwaite, anticipating seeing a relic of a time when local bridges were made of cable and lumber rather than concrete and steel, might find that the final leg winds about eight miles down County Road 432, a single-lane, red-dirt road.
The farther down the road you get, it feels a little like you are going back in time as you drive by small ranches and sparse housing.
By the time you reach the bridge, the sight of it might take your breath away, but in the rustic rural surroundings, it does not seem all that out of place.
Even locals drive a little slower when they cross the Colorado River at Regency to take in the view of the river and feel the bridge’s sway.
