This is not the historic bridge you can see today at Suwannee Springs.

It’s the one before that. The clue is the columns holding it up. Also the spring wall holding water.

Site of Stagecoach Road Bridge at Suwannee Springs 2025-12-12, Upstream from Historic 1931 Graffiti Bridge

The Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) posted this picture December 12, 2025.

Suwannee Springs with old bridge, 2025-12-12 –SRWMD

Archival photography makes for some wonderful #FlashbackFriday posts and we wanted to share this one of Suwannee Springs with you today. And if the bridge over the Suwannee River looks a little out of place to you, it’s not you—it’s the bridge! This particular bridge predates the two that are there today and no longer exists, but you can still see some of its remnants.

By the two that are there today, presumably SRWMD is referring to both the famous Graffiti Bridge and the current US 129 bridge downstream from it.

Here’s a picture of both of those bridges that I took from the Suwannee River in 2017.

Reflections of Bridges, 93rd Drive and US 129, 2017:05:20 15:32:39, –jsq for WWALS https://www.google.com/maps/@30.3947610,-82.9353479,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0

You can see the Graffiti Bridge is on squarish columns, not on the round pillars in the SRWMD picture.

I shared the SRWMD post in the WWALS private member facebook group and asked, “Who knows the bridge and the year?”.

Linda Dicker replied, “I’ll bet Ken Sulak can tell you.”

Fair enough. Over to Ken.

That is the old Suwannee Springs springhouse with the old Stagecoach Road bridge. Early 1900s vintage, steel truss on lally columns (one of which is still standing), wooden decked, replaced by the abandoned but still standing steel bridge that is covered with spraypaint graffiti.

OK—found it—one of several [pictures] actually. From about mid 1920s. Another Sunday photo with folks lollygagging on the bridge. Florida Memory PR10460. I was there five weeks ago, and then again on Thanksgiving Day.

Florida Memory PR10460 –Ken Sulack

Still standing Lally column of first steel truss bridge at Suwannee Spring, viewed through a crack in the deterioriating wall of the old springhouse. Its mate on this shore is fallen. The matching pair on the opposite shore are cutoff a few feet up, but still embedded in the bedrock into which they were driven.

Lally column of old Stagecoach Road Bridge, sent 2025-12-14 –Ken Sulak

Notes on Suwannee Springs bridge from my Excel file:

Licensed by Hamilton County in 1893 to B. F. Boon and Nathan Lewis Bryan 1839-1914 [grandson of Joseph Bryan of Blounts Ferry] but not built until after 1898—probably completed in 1903, in service until 1931

Probably the second oldest steel highway bridge in Florida. Licensed in 1893, but set upon Lally Columns suggesting 1898 or later construction??? Completed in 1903 according to Bland & Assoc. Suwannee Springs survey report 2005

1893 cost $208.89 [HHHC p 104]; marked on USACE 1912 map; Lally columns not patented until 1898, but already used for this and other bridges years before that date.

Thanks, Ken.

Here’s another one, RC05113, mislabeled as built in 1931.

https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/28526

Stagecoach Road Bridge, accessed 2025-12-15, RC05113, mislabeled as built in 1931 –Florida Memory

That’s a good view of the spring pool.

And round columns show that’s the older bridge.

Plus, you can clearly see in all the pictures of the old bridge from the spring pool that the old bridge was upstream from the pool, not downstream like the Graffiti Bridge.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

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https://wwals.net/donations/

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