With work going on to repair the 1928 Tombigbee bridge at the foot of Main Street, several people have asked me about the history of the river bridges at Columbus. When the barge struck the bridge four years ago, it was not the first time a bridge here had been struck by a large commercial vessel.

On Feb. 17, 1851, the side-wheel steamboat Romeo, a Columbus, Aberdeen and Mobile packet boat, attempted to pass under the Columbus bridge with the river at near-record flood stage. The steamer’s pilothouse struck the bottom of the bridge and was knocked off. There was no mention that the steamer had lost its smokestacks, but smokestacks on the steamboats could often be lowered and they may not have been lost.

That accident happened at the 1842 bridge, which was the first bridge at Columbus. Previously the river would have been crossed on the ferry established in 1817 at the west end of Military Street ,which is now Second Avenue North.

That first bridge at Columbus was a wooden covered bridge that came off the bluff at the end of Fourth Avenue South and was said to provide a 65-foot clearance for steamboats at normal river level. It was built by African American bridge builder Horace King in 1842. The Columbus Democrat newspaper in the spring of 1846 referred to King as “a negro man … who built our bridge here across the Tombigbee and the new one across the Luxapellilah. He is one of the best mechanics in his line in all the South.”

In the flood of 1847, the steamer Putman took a new route upriver when blocked by the1842 bridge. “The engineer turned the bridge on the west side and steering over the old field made a short cut across the bend into the mainstream some distance above the bridge.” In the 1851 flood, the steamer Jenny Lind also sailed around the west end of the bridge, over what is now The Island, to save 1,100 bales of cotton in a warehouse threatened by flood waters at the old river town of West Port (where the Tenn-Tom channel cuts old Highway 82 to make the Island). The bridge was removed by the mid-1850s, and a ferry was put back in operation.

In 1871 construction of an iron swing bridge began at Aberdeen. The specifications for that bridge were published in February 1871 and stated the bridge had to be constructed “in order that steamboat navigation may not be interrupted, the structure must be of that kind known as the ‘swing bridge.’” A swing bridge was one whose center span would turn to allow a boat to pass through.

A new iron bridge at Columbus was also planned in the mid-1870s. It too was to be a swing bridge so as not to obstruct river traffic. The bridge was completed and officially accepted by Lowndes County on April 11, 1877. During the record flood of 1892 a large section of that bridge went under water. By the early 1900s the Columbus bridge was showing its age and needed to be replaced by a larger, wider bridge. The old bridges at Aberdeen and Columbus had been designed to be only wide enough for two wagons or buggies to pass each other and were not designed for motor vehicles.

The Mobile and Ohio Railroad trestle at Columbus was built in 1861. It was rebuilt during late 1905 and early 1906. During the rebuilding some timbers were allowed to fall into the river. One of them hung up under water at Ten Mile Shoals south of town, becoming what was called a deadhead. On Jan. 19, 1906, the 155-foot-long steamboat Vienna hit it, ripping a hole in the steamer’s bottom and sinking it.

In 1926 construction began on a new highway bridge at Columbus just south of the 1877 bridge. The Tombigbee was still classified as a navigable waterway and could not be obstructed so the new bridge was also built as a swing bridge. After its completion in 1928, the bridge was opened to test it, but accounts that it opened a couple of other times are unverified. The 1928 bridge was in use until replaced by the current bridge in the early 1990s.

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].