Bridges Over the Brazos

by Jon McConal, Bob Ray Sanders

Overview

The Brazos River meanders 923 miles from the Texas Panhandle to the Gulf of Mexico, crossing the High Plains, the West Texas Lower Rolling Plains, the Western Cross Timbers, the Grand Prairie, and the Gulf Coastal Plain.

Journalist Jon McConal has spent many hours hiking the river’s banks and camping out on its sandbars, discovering the many bridges that cross the river, and studying maps and tracing the river’s route. His friend Eddie Lane has canoed and camped the Brazos, even retracing the canoe journey made famous by John Graves in Goodbye to a River.

The two drove more than four thousand miles to look at sixty-two bridges ranging from a private bridge made from oilfield pipe to modern concrete structures. They stood on the bridges and watched the river, sometimes loaded with trash, sometimes serene and gentle. They met the people who lived near the bridges, heard their stories, and ate in local cafés.

This is the story of two men with a love of the outdoors and the Brazos River and the people they met along their journey. They hope readers, too, will want to take a few day trips and explore the Brazos and its bridges.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875653129
Publisher:	TCU Press
Publication date:	10/13/2005
Pages:	286
Sales rank:	1,158,025
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

A native of West Texas, Jon McConal was on the staff of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for forty years, twenty as a contributing editor and twenty as a columnist, writing most often about rural and old-time Texas. Now retired, he and his wife make their home in Granbury. McConal is the author of Jon McConal’s Texas and My Years with Bob Wills.