As New Bridge Rises, Remembering The Opening of the Old One

The area around the Colorado River along Business Highway 71 is a busy place these days as a new bridge is being built next to the old bridge that has stood there for 80 years.

Junell (Schroeder) Van Horn, who now lives in Horseshoe Bay, thinks her family may have been among the first to cross that 80-year-old Highway 71 bridge when she was just a baby.

She said her mother, Hulda, always told her a story about how when she was in labor with Junell that her father drove her from their home in Prairie Valley to La Grange to the hospital.

But the bridge was not complete and her mother, nine months pregnant, had to climb a ladder up to the bridge where an ambulance was waiting to take her across the rest of the nearly completed bridge and to the hospital. Her father, Willhelm, meanwhile, drove around the river by some other route and met them at the hospital later.

Junell made her debut into this world on June 15, 1941, on Father’s Day. She said she always kind of doubted the validity of the bridge story until she came across a construction photo of the Business 71 bridge on Page 67 of the “Images of America” by Marie Watts (we have a handful of those books which were published in 2008 still for sale at the Record), and sure enough there was a big ladder alongside one of the big concrete pillars of the still unfinished bridge.

“It just amazes me that my tiny little mother, nine months pregnant would climb up that ladder,” Junell said.

Junell said her mother told her that by the time she and her new baby were able to leave the hospital the bridge was finished and they were among the first to drive across the completed structure – and now Junell believes the long-held family story.

Junell said she’s excited about seeing the new bridge and visiting with old friends next time she visits this area.