1999 List

Old River Bridge

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City/County/Congressional District: Benton , Saline County ( District 2 )
Location Class: Government
Year Built: 1889
Historic Designation: National Register of Historic Places 1977
Status: Restored

The Old River Bridge in Saline County is one of the oldest remaining bridges in the state. It was constructed in 1889 at the cost of $5,000 and represents a great deal of the history of Saline County. In 1827, Ezra M. Owen established a small settlement west of the Saline River and named it Collegeville. Early in 1931, a post office was established at the “crossing of the Saline” with William Lockhart, the first recorded settler in Saline County, as postmaster. The settlement was officially named “Saline”. The Old Missouri Trail became important as the connection between Collegeville and Little Rock and as a main road through the county. It was made a military road in 1824 and there were constant requests for Congress to appropriate funds to improve it. In the early 1830s, all that had been done to change the road from a barely passable trail was cutting of timber. The argument was made to Congress that it was the main artery of travel from St. Louis and Memphis southwest into Texas and Mexico, and therefore a national concern. In 1831, Arkansas Legislature passed a law giving William Lockhart an exclusive right to construct and operate a toll bridge over the Saline River where the Military Road crossed it. In 1830, Charles Caldwell started a settlement five miles up the river. Benton, as it came to be known, began to grow and was named the county seat at the formation of Saline County in 1835. This expanded the importance of the Military Road but slowly led to the decline of the settlement in Lockhart’s Saline. Although the bridge was closed to vehicle traffic in 1974, it remained in the county’s possession. In 2018 they announced plans to turn it into a pedestrian/biking bridge to connect the Southwest Bike Trail from Little Rock to Hot Springs.