Bunton Branch Bridge
Kyle, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Bridge No. 44, now known as the Bunton Branch Bridge, is located just north of Kyle on a north-south section of road that parallels Interstate 35, a remnant of the 1915 Austin-San Antonio post road. The bridge crosses Bunton Branch, an intermittent tributary of Plum Creek that runs in a southeast direction across Hays and Caldwell Counties. The creek has its headwaters east of Mountain City in Hays County and was named after the family of a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, Col. John W. Bunton. The 42-foot long concrete structure was built in 1915 by J.N. George & Sons Construction Company as part of the first federal aid highway projects in Texas. The bridge is composed of a single closed-spandrel arch forty feet in length supported by reinforced concrete abutments. The bridge’s deck, measuring 20 feet in width, is composed of concrete and carries one-lane traffic over an 18-foot wide roadway. Out of thirty-five bridges built within a distance spanning 78 miles, the Bunton Branch Bridge is the only known reinforced concrete arch bridge as part of this project. The improvements made to the Austin-San Antonio Road (later state highway 2) and the construction of bridges like this one resulted in a wave of travel and tourism for central Texas. By the 1920s, State Highway 2 was one of the heaviest traveled roads in the state. In the 1930s, the state highway department changed the alignment of the highway, abandoning the section of old post road over Bunton Branch Bridge. Today, this historic bridge is one of the few tangible links to this historic highway in Hays County. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2012
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Bunton Branch Bridge, built in 1915 by J.N. George & Sons, carried the Austin–San Antonio post road across an intermittent creek named for John W. Bunton, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Part of the first federal-aid highway projects in Texas, its single 40-foot reinforced-concrete arch was the only one of its kind among thirty-five bridges along the route. The improved road became one of the state's busiest by the 1920s before a later realignment left this span behind.
Why it matters
This modest concrete arch marks the dawn of federally funded highways in Texas and the automobile-tourism boom that reshaped Central Texas travel.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Bunton Branch Bridge belongs to the dawn of the automobile age. Built in 1915 just north of Kyle, it carried the Austin–San Antonio post road across a small, intermittent creek — a modest 42-foot span at a moment when the whole country was learning to drive. For most of the previous century, Texas roads had been dirt tracks, dusty in summer and impassable mud in winter. The car changed everything, and suddenly good all-weather roads and reliable bridges became a public necessity.
This is the Progressive era's practical face: government stepping in to build the infrastructure a modern economy demanded. The bridge was part of the first federal-aid highway projects in Texas, an early expression of a new idea — that building and maintaining roads was a job for organized public effort, not just local labor.
The creek it crosses, Bunton Branch, gave the bridge its name, and the creek in turn was named for the family of Colonel John W. Bunton, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. So even this small concrete arch is tied, through a name on a map, to the founding generation of the Republic of Texas.
People & events
The bridge is credited to a builder and a project rather than to a single dramatic event. In 1915 the firm of J.N. George & Sons Construction Company raised this structure as part of a wave of highway improvements — one small link in a much larger effort to modernize the road between two of the state's major cities.
What makes it special is a matter of engineering. Along a 78-mile stretch of this route, thirty-five bridges were built, but Bunton Branch is the only known reinforced-concrete arch among them — a single closed-spandrel arch forty feet long, set on reinforced-concrete abutments, carrying a narrow one-lane deck. In a line of thirty-five, it was the one designed differently, and it is that distinction that earned it recognition as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 2012.
The improved road it served did exactly what its planners hoped. Travel and tourism surged; by the 1920s the highway — later State Highway 2 — had become one of the busiest in Texas. Then, in the 1930s, the highway department changed the route's alignment and bypassed this section of old post road, leaving the little arch to grow quiet while faster, wider highways carried the traffic away.
Its place in the American story
This unassuming concrete arch marks a genuine turning point in American life: the birth of the federally funded highway. The bridge was part of the first federal-aid road projects in Texas, and those projects were the local face of a national movement to knit the country together with paved, all-weather roads. The system of numbered highways and government road-building that Americans now take for granted grew out of exactly this era.
It also captures the automobile-tourism boom that reshaped the nation between the world wars. As cars grew common and roads improved, ordinary families could travel for pleasure for the first time, and Central Texas — like much of the country — saw a wave of new travel wash over it. The bridge stands as a witness to that change.
And there is a poignant note in its fate. Bypassed by a later realignment, it survives precisely because progress moved on without it — a common story on America's back roads, where an obsolete bridge or an abandoned alignment becomes the last tangible link to how travel used to feel.
If you visit
Come to Bunton Branch Bridge expecting something small and quietly remarkable, not grand. It is a single graceful concrete arch, forty feet long and just wide enough for one lane, sitting on a remnant of old road that parallels the roar of Interstate 35 — a striking contrast between how we traveled in 1915 and how we travel now.
Look for the shape of the arch itself: a closed-spandrel design, meaning the space above the curve is filled in solid, giving it a clean, sturdy profile. Remember that of thirty-five bridges built along this route, this was the only reinforced-concrete arch — so you are looking at the odd one out, the survivor, honored as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 2012.
It makes a rewarding short detour for anyone interested in road history or the early automobile age. Stand on or beside the old span, listen to the modern interstate humming nearby, and picture this narrow road in the 1920s, thick with some of the heaviest traffic in the state — travelers and tourists rolling between Austin and San Antonio on one of the first highways the whole country helped to build.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · John W. Bunton
Themes & tags
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