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This was the ORIGINAL Pecos River bridge built by the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad (which by then was owned by the Southern Pacific). Railroad construction crews building east from El Paso and west from San Antonio met each other about 3 miles west of this bridge in 1883, where GH&SA President Thomas Wentworth Peirce drove a silver spike to complete the line. Already advertising itself as the "Sunset Route" at the time of SP acquisition, this GH&SA slogan quickly got applied to SP's entire Los Angeles to New Orleans corridor. Nine years after it was built, SP abandoned this low-level bridge when their famous Pecos High Bridge bypassed it 5 miles upstream.

Love the Markland street lamp with street names and mailbox at the extreme left!

This photo has some serious mistakes in its information. First of all the photo was taken at Wichita Falls Union Station which was not even constructed until 1910, so there is no way that this photo was taken in 1905. In 1905 the FW&D used its own station which was at Seventh Street. The crowd is standing at the end of Ninth, two blocks from where the 1905 depot was. Next, note that it appears to be a silver lightweight car, possibly a Budd streamlined car third car from the end of train. The FW&D owned no such lightweights until 1940 and the Burlington as a whole had not adopted anything silver (paint or stainless steel) until after 1936. Lastly the photo caption says that this was President Theodore Roosevelt on his way to a Rough Rider reunion in San Antonio. However the train is headed northbound, away, from San Antonio as no train headed to San Antonio would be northbound when passing thru Wichita Falls. Therefore, if this is a photo of President Roosevelt at Wichita Falls, I strongly believe that this is President Franklin Roosevelt, not Teddy.

Steve Goen You are indeed correct, this is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, not Theodore Roosevelt in the photograph. We have made the appropriate changes both on here and on our main site. We appreciate hearing about the history of these items!