Toll Bridge & Old Bridgeport
Bridgeport, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
When Butterfield Overland Mail traversed this area (1858-61) on St. Louis to San Francisco route, a crossing over West Fork of the Trinity was a necessity. Colonel W. H. Hunt on February 11, 1860, obtained a charter and built a toll bridge here (50 yards west). The Overland Mail ceased operating as Civil War began. The bridge soon collapsed. However, a settlement had begun here, and in 1873 Charles Cates, a Decatur merchant, spanned the river with an iron bridge. When the Rock Island Railroad built to this point in 1893, town moved but retained historic name. (1972)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Butterfield's Overland Mail crossed this stretch of the West Fork of the Trinity around 1860, a reliable river crossing was essential, and Colonel W. H. Hunt built a chartered toll bridge just to the west. The mail line collapsed with the coming of the Civil War, but a settlement had taken root; a Decatur merchant spanned the river again with an iron bridge in 1873, and the town shifted when the railroad arrived in 1893.
Why it matters
The story of Bridgeport traces how transportation — from stage road to toll bridge to railroad — repeatedly decided where a Texas town would live or die.
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Related people
- · W. H. Hunt
- · Charles Cates
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hunt, Col. William Hudson
Bridgeport, TX
Born in New York in 1815, William Hudson Hunt came to Texas in 1836 to join the fight for independence, then served the young Republic as a soldier and surveyor—helping locate the site of the capital and joining the Santa Fe Expedition. In 1855 he pioneered Wise County, building a ranch on the West Fork of the Trinity, laying out the town that became Decatur, and helping route the Butterfield Overland Mail through the county. His remains were reinterred here after Lake Bridgeport flooded his family cemetery.
Site of Old Town Paradise
Paradise, TX
One of Wise County's earliest settlers, O.H.P. Read, made his home here in 1858 in a community first called Eldorado, where William M. Anderson opened a general store and surveyor Ben Banks laid out a town square. Renamed Paradise after a post office naming conflict in 1876, the town shifted northeast in the 1890s to be near the new Rock Island rail line, and "old" Paradise faded away by 1927 as its cotton crops failed. Today only a home built by Confederate Lt. William Hall Jay remains on the old square.
First Christian Church of Paradise
Paradise, TX
In the late 1880s this congregation began with home worship services in the original Paradise townsite, but the arrival of the Rock Island Railroad drew residents to a new location nearer the tracks, and the church followed. Merchant, school superintendent, and farmer among its early trustees bought land and built the Gothic Revival church about 1905, its steeple still holding the original bell. Membership once dwindled to as few as three, yet services never ceased.
Butterfield Overland Stage Line
Decatur, TX
From 1858 to 1861, the Butterfield Overland Mail rolled through Decatur on its 2,795-mile run linking St. Louis and San Francisco with semi-weekly stage and mail service. The route was one of the great logistical feats of its era, knitting the far-flung antebellum nation together across deserts and plains until the Civil War severed the southern line.