Sunday, September 16, 2018

THE GOATMAN OF OLD ALTON BRIDGE


For some time now, the legend of Goatman's Bridge has drawn the adventurous and the curious to this abandoned steel trestle known officially as Old Alton bridge, which spans Hickory Creek in Argyle, just outside the North Texas town of Denton. But the truth behind its ghostly legend lies beneath murkier waters than even those of the muddy tributary that moves sluggishly beneath.

 
 
In 1884, the King Bridge Company of Ohio built an iron bridge on Copper Canyon Road, just south of where the moribund settlement of Alton was established in 1850. For more than a century, this bridge served horses and automobiles alike. In 1988, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and continued to serve as a functioning bridge until 2001 when a new concrete structure was built only a few yards away on a new stretch of Copper Canyon Road. This change finally solved a formerly dangerous blind curve in the road that forced motorists to honk when on the bridge to signal their presence to anyone ahead. 

 
Legend has it that in the 1930s an African-American gentleman by the name of Oscar Washburn was doing pretty good business with his herd of goats, from which he sold milk, meat, cheese, and hides. He hung a sign from the Old Alton Bridge declaring: This Way to the Goat Man.

 
Apparently his booming business ruffled the feathers of local Klansmen, so one August night in 1938 they stormed his abode and dragged him, noose in hand, to the Old Alton Bridge. There, he and his family was strung up and lynched for all to see. As there lifeless bodies swung pendulously in the night, the Klansmen noticed that Oscar's was empty. The rope was intact, but there was no body hanging from it. Moreover, there had been no splash indicating he had fallen to the creek below. Washburn had simply vanished—and he was never seen again.
 

This disappearing act may be a folkloric calque lifted from a Texas legend said to date to the 1860s. In this tale, some good ol' boys in the Copper Canyon area lynched a goat-herding Creole slave by the name of Jack Kendall from a tree overhanging Hickory Creek. Unfortunately, while he swung there, his head and body separated and both parts fell into the muddy creek below. The men watched in horror as Kendall's body arose from the muck--through some unknown agency—to wade over to the shore where his goats were still corralled.  Jack Kendall then wrenched the head off of one of his goats and supplanted his own missing head with the animal's horned pate.

 
From here, the tales only get wilder. When cars could still drive over the bridge, it was said that if their headlights were off, they would encounter the Goatman on the other side. Others claim there has been an inordinate amount of abandoned cars near the bridge, their occupants were never found. Discarnate voices and growls are heard, as well as the sound of horse hooves and phantom splashing in the creek. Some have reported encountering glowing red eyes on the bridge and in the thick trees surrounding the area. It's said if you go at night, you can summon the Goatman with by knocking three times on the steel beams. But be careful! Legend claims that if you have a lineage of Klansmen or slave owners in your blood, you'll get dragged into the woods to face a hideous retribution.
 

Some say when he manifests, the Goatman is a monstrous amalgam of a man with a goat's head. Truth be told, I find this addition ridiculous; he was only called the Goat Man because he owned goats--not because he WAS a goat. I think fantastical elements like this might be borrowed from other Goatman legends elsewhere in the country, such as Maryland's axe-wielding satyr that also goes by the name Goatman. There's also the Pope Lick Monster in Kentucky, which is said to be half man, half goat. The legend might also get confused with tales of the nearby Lake Worth Monster, which was described as a goat-man as well in the summer of 1969.
 

There's also talk of a woman who haunts the bridge as well. Some have said she is Oscar Washburn's wife, while others claim she is an embodiment of the Mexican legend of La Llorona, the weeping woman who is associated with rivers and creeks and other bodies of water. She weeps for the children she lost to the murky depths.

 
But these are all just myths in the grandest tradition. Urban legends designed to invoke delightful little shudders and goad the stalwart into doing the foolish: challenge the Goatman. In truth, there are no historical records to back up the tales of either Oscar Washburn or Jack Kendall. I doubt very much that there are any more broken down cars abandoned nearby than could be said of a hundred other places. When I visited, I had only the impression that (mosquitos aside) this was a nice place for a walk. Maybe my impression would be different had I crossed those old wooden boards at midnight to knock three times on the iron supports.

 


 

 

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