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.
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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