Yancopin Bridge, Railway and footbridge in Desha County, Arkansas.
Yancopin Bridge is an abandoned single-track all-metal truss railroad bridge over the Arkansas River in Desha County, Arkansas, with a lift span and a later swing span, plus long wooden trestle approaches at both ends.
The Memphis, Helena & Louisiana Railway, a subsidiary of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern, completed the bridge around 1903, but the Watson–New Latour track it carried opened on March 1, 1906. Floods repeatedly shifted the Arkansas River channel, forcing rebuilds; after World War II a swing span was added once the lift-span channel silted shut. Union Pacific, which absorbed Missouri Pacific in 1982, took the bridge out of service in 1992 and donated it with a 73-mile right-of-way to Arkansas.
The bridge carried the Delta Eagle, Missouri Pacific's first diesel streamlined train in Arkansas, from 1941 between Memphis and Tallulah; passenger service ended on 27 February 1960. Union Pacific donated the bridge and a 73-mile right-of-way to Arkansas in 1992, creating the Delta Heritage Trail. The swing span is still turned by hand for logging traffic on the river.
Access is from Watson, Arkansas, via County Road 41. The bridge is maintained by the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department, and its swing span is turned open and closed by hand for logging traffic on the river for several months each year. Rattlesnakes live in the surrounding area, and north of the bridge the trail passes through old-growth hardwood forest in the Trusten Holder State Wildlife Management Area.
The swing span was added after World War II because the navigable channel under the original lift span had drifted shut, so the bridge ended up with two movable spans. The swing span is still turned open and closed by hand for logging traffic on the river for several months each year.
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