Volume 8 , Issue 12

Alva's Grimes Bridge (Oklahoma)...

"The Grimes wooden bridge is not there any more. It was washed out by flood around 1950 or 1951, I think. It has since been replaced by a concrete bridge. If you drive around the curve at Hatfield Pond and keep driving like you are going north out of town, you will cross the tracks (railroad) and drive about two miles. When you come to the river, you're at the NEW Grimes Bridge (as I call it). The Grimes/Wilcox Farm is located about a mile north of that.

The old Grimes bridge was very rickety and was constructed on wooden post pilings that were driven into the river bed. The bed was wooden, but there were two parallel strips of steel bedding that you could match your car tires on. In its last few years, the bridge had deteriorated so much that some of the cross planks that made up the bed had rotted out and you could see the river bed through the bridge in places. It creaked when a vehicle crossed it and everyone took it pretty slow. No one was surprised when it went, but that meant that all farm machinery moving from directly north of Alva and going south would have to cross at the 281 bridge. Combines and tractors pulling gang plows were a pretty common sight in Alva until the bridge was finally replaced about 10 or 15 years later." -- JIM   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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