Tuesday, December 10, 2024
The Gatesville City Council approved the temporary closure of the historic Leon River Bridge at Brown Park due to safety concerns at a regular meeting on Thursday, Nov. 14.
The bridge at Brown Park, built in 1904 and a recorded Texas Historical Landmark, was closed to vehicle traffic in 2015 but has remained open for pedestrians and cyclists. While preparing for the eclipse earlier this year, City Manager Brad Hunt shared that the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) provided the city with an inspection report on the bridge that recommends closing it off to any type of crossing until it receives needed repairs.
TxDOT’s concern stems from a single nut that holds up the entire deck structure for the bridge. If the nut comes loose or unthreads itself, it could cause the deck to collapse.
“What I recommend is a temporary closure of the bridge, because I have this information written down from TxDOT with a picture that says, ‘every day it’s open, is another day you're at risk,’” Hunt said.
With no record of maintenance for the bridge since its partial restoration in 1994, there has been an increase in concern about its state of disrepair. Following extensive community action to save the bridge between 2015 and 2019, local leaders agreed not to develop a new river crossing and not abandon the bridge.
“I know that this is a difficult topic with a lot of history, not just since 1904 but in the last 10 years,” Hunt said. “I did a lot of research - it might need help quite a bit, and I appreciate that the efforts that were made several years ago.”
Before recommending the temporary closure to the council, Hunt said city staff set up game cameras during the month of October to determine how many people utilized the bridge for both recreational and travel purposes. The cameras documented more than 200 crossings by walkers, bicyclists, and motorcyclists.
“I wanted to know all that information. What's the impact on the community going to be when we say we need to close this bridge? Is it going to cause hardship?” he said.
Hunt said the cameras showed that most citizens utilized the bridge for recreational use. For those who use it for east/west travel, Hunt said the U.S. Highway 84 bridge is one of the only alternate routes, which will add approximately 20 minutes to travel time.
The city will ask a contracted engineering firm to first re-examine the bridge before presenting an estimated cost of repairs at a future city council meeting. Hunt notes that if the engineering firm deems that the bridge is still safe, they will reopen it for pedestrian traffic.
“It's meant to be temporary. I am in no way saying that the 1904 historic bridge should not be open to pedestrians,” Hunt said. “I imagine that the trusses are what people like to look at. If anything, revamping that thing could be some kind of concrete piling underneath where you're walking across basically a brand-new bridge underneath an old bridge.”
Hunt mentioned that revamping Brown Park could be a part of a capital improvement plan or future parks master plan.
“That'd be great to make Brown Park an actual park, instead of just a dead end of a street that has a plaque – which it does – that designates it as Brown Park,” he said.
Hunt said in an email on Tuesday that city crews are working on the construction of the barricades for the temporary closure this week.
