Memory of old bridge lives on

Bridge over Spavinaw Creek on Limekiln Road between Gravette and Decatur recorded in state's historic bridge program

This photo from the Historic American Engineering Record shows the Spavinaw Creek Bridge on Limekiln Road, then known as County Road 29, before it was dismantled.
This photo from the Historic American Engineering Record shows the Spavinaw Creek Bridge on Limekiln Road, then known as County Road 29, before it was dismantled.

— Through spring floods, dry seasons and winter storms, the Spavinaw Creek Bridge on Limekiln Road stood for more than 80 years, providing residents with safe passage from Decatur to Gravette.

The old bridge saw generations of laughing children grow up, leaping withdelight from its wooden deck into the swimming hole below. Its steel trusses bore heavy wagon loads pulled by teams of draft horses, replaced over the years byrumbling trucks.

The old bridge was replaced by a new, higher concrete bridge sometime after 1989 but its memory still lives on, thanks to the Arkansas State Highways and Transportation Department’s Historic Bridge Program.

It is one of four Benton County Bridges recorded by the Historic American Engineering Record section of the Heritage Documentation Program of the National Park Service in coordination with the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department. The records, including original contracts and architectural drawings, can be viewed at www.arkansashighways.com.

The record of the Spavinaw Creek Bridge, by historian Kathryn Steen and writer Corinne Smith, shows the 70-foot span was built in 1909 by the Illinois Steel Bridge Company. The bridge was 14 1/2 feet wide and the roadway was 10 1/2 feet wide. The bridge's bedstead trusses, once common, had become unique and it was the only surviving example in Arkansas by the time the report was written in 1988.

At the turn of the century, Decatur was well known for its peaches, while seven miles away, Gravette had a canning factory.

“With the Spavinaw River running between them, it was logical to build a bridge between the two towns,” the report states.

The funding of the bridge became a controversial issue. In 1907, Benton County levied taxes to establish a bridge fund, and while repairs were made, no new bridges were built. When tax collecting continued the next year with no new bridges built, the Gravette News-Herald began to report that some citizens were wondering about the possibility of corruption, according to the report which cites several newspaper articles.

Once the bridge funds were tracked down, there was the question of where to locate the bridge.

“In April of 1909 the bridge commission, consisting of County Judge Leander Norris, Culver Crowder and W.T. Patterson, made a trip out to thearea to find a bridge site. They decided on a point 'just below the ford.'

“A week later, the editor of the newspaper urged his readers to voice their complaints now about the chosen site if there were any. Some people had suggested a point further upstream might be better since it would not cut off 'access to a cemetery, two churches and Mr. Holt’s,'” the report states with several more citations to Gravette News-Herald articles.

While there is no mention of which site was eventually chosen, a contract with the Illinois Steel Bridge Company calls for the 70-foot bridge to be erected by Dec. 31, 1909, for a payment of $2,000 in Benton County “warrants” upon completion. The county was to provide the railing, concrete-encased piers, oak flooring and two coats of paint.

photo

This photo from the Historic American Engineering Record shows a bank side view of the old Spavinaw Creek Bridge.

Leonard Truitt, the oldest living life-long resident of Decatur, said he has been traveling over the Spavinaw Creek Bridge all his life.

“When I was a kid, that was the main place to go swimming. There was a nice little hole just above the bridge,” Truitt said.

A photo in a June 1989 issue of the Gravette News-Herald shows children were still enjoying the swimming hole above the bridge, leaping into the water from the bridge’s wooden deck above.

The Spavinaw Creek Bridge on Limekiln Road was officially closed in the spring of 1989, according to an April 9, 1989, Gravette News-Herald articleby Dodie Evans. The bridge was one of two closed in Benton County after a state report showed them in need of repairs.

At first it seemed the state was to pay to have the bridge relocated to Devils Den State Park, but in another article, written in June of 1989, Evans wrote that the bridge move had been scrapped. The article did shed some light on the reason for the bridge closure, stating that high water during the spring of 1989 resulted in the backup of debris, which caused some of the steel members to become twisted. After the bridge was removed, it was replaced with the current concrete bridge.

When asked if Limekiln Road ever served as the main road between Decatur and Gravette, Truitt said that, to his knowledge, Arkansas Highway 59 has always been the most traveled route. However, building a bridge on Limekiln Road does fit well with the historic account that a route was needed to get peaches from Decatur to a canning factory in Gravette, Truitt said, explaining that there were a number of peach orchards between Decatur and Maysville, and Limekiln Road could have served as the most direct route to transport peaches from the orchards to the canning factory.

Truitt recalled that Highway 59 between Decatur and Gravette was paved in the 1930s. Its original bridge over Spavinaw Creek had high metal arches and a wooden floor, he said. Until it was paved, Highway 59 was graveled and a pretty good road, so gettingstuck wasn't really a problem, Truitt said. Although Truitt wasn't certain which year the road was paved, his older brother Charlie Truitt, who worked for the state highway department at the time, helped with building the current cement bridge near the end of Crystal Lake Airport. Up to that point, the bridge had been wooden.

Truitt, who operated a road grader for Benton County for 14 years until 1961, said Arkansas Highway 102 toward Centerton wasn't paved until 1961 and 1962. The trip to Bentonville was long and “pretty rough” before Highway 102 was blacktopped, Truitt said. Arkansas Highway 102 west, towards Maysville, was a county road until taken over by the state in 1961 and was paved shortly afterwards, he said.

News, Pages 8 on 09/14/2011