Medio Creek Bridge

The Pratt through truss bridge over Medio Creek in rural Bee County in the Texas Coastal Plains has been a source of pride locally since its construction in 1897. Rebuilt in 1923, it is an excellent example of its type, one rapidly disappearing from rural Texas. The Medio Creek Bridge appears to meet National Register Criterion C for its significance in engineering and associations with notable New Jersey and Texas bridge-building companies.

The late 19th century was a prosperous period for Bee County, in South Texas. The county population more than doubled from 3,720 in the 1890 census to 7,720 in 1900, and agriculture and ranching were very impotent Walton in the northern portion of the county were renamed Normanna (meaning 'Home of the Norsemen' and sometimes referred to as Normanna Station) that decade by a newly arrived group of Norwegian settlers, and a depot and stockyard had been erected by 1894 to accommodate the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway, which went through the settlement in 1886. To the west of Normanna was the town of Mineral, which had flourished briefly as a health spa in the 1880s. According to the Handbook of Texas, the spa failed when its well was deepened and the medicinal power of its waters greatly diminished.

In the mid-1890s, the road which linked Mineral and Normanna had no bridge over Medio Creek in the 1890s. The creek rises in adjacent Karnes County and flows southeast 45 miles, joining Blanco Creek in Refugio County to form the short Mission River. Some belief the Mineral-Normanna Road to have been a link on the main road between the county seat, Beeville, and San Antonio, although certainly for most of the 20th century the road, now called County Road 241, has catered to local traffic. Nonetheless, there was likely optimism that a bridge would benefit Bee County by providing access for the transportation of agricultural products from the western part of the county to the railhead at Normanna and restoring Mineral's prosperity; the latter ambition was not to be realized.

Accordingly, in June 1897, builder Viggo Kohler submitted a petition to the Bee County Commissioners Court to erect a bridge over Medio Creek on the Normanna Station and Mineral Road. A motion was made and passed to build the bridge, and the project was put out for bid. Funding was to be in the form of six percent bonds purchased from the permanent school fund of the county. Because of the objections of the Texas Attorney General, who by law had to pass on the issuing of the bonds, the Commissioners Court amended the bridge order by transferring one cent of the general levy to the bridge levy.