Photo by Jay Paul
For more than three years, there has been one legal way to access Texas Beach along North Bank Trail: swimming across the James River. On Sept. 1, 2022, the pedestrian truss bridge over the CSX railroad tracks that led to the beloved hideaway near Maymont failed a safety inspection, and the bridge has been padlocked ever since.
“We identified different areas of degradation to the bridge that occurred over the course of its 50 years,” says Allen McCown, project manager for the city of Richmond’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities. McCown is leading the James River Park System renovation.
Vegetation and rainfall have weathered away the steel I-beams supporting the concrete deck — the surface where people have been walking for five decades — McCown says. The concrete deck did not fail inspection, but it’s being replaced, too.
At the beginning of September, the city began long-promised repairs to the bridge. According to McCown, reconstruction will include new, reinforced steel I-beams, and the concrete walking deck will be replaced with aluminum.
The contract for the project went to H.G. Reynolds, a construction company based in South Carolina. The city of Richmond received $2 million for the project through the American Rescue Plan Act, a stimulus package passed by Congress in 2021. The city is on the hook for any costs beyond that $2 million.
Under ARPA, the city must finish construction by Dec. 31, 2026, but McCown says the bridge should be open to the public well before that date. He also hopes the reconstruction is a long-term solution.
“There will be different one-off fixes, but it should be decades before there’s a need for significant capital expense for this bridge again,” McCown says.
The reopening of the park will be a relief to rivergoers, who in 2024 lost city access to Pipeline Trail due to safety concerns. Texas Beach foot traffic greatly increased in the 2010s after staircases and walking bridges were built there. Since the truss bridge’s closure, however, people have reached Texas Beach by illegally crossing the train tracks under the bridge, Friends of James River Park Executive Director Josh Stutz says.
“While we strictly discourage this practice for safety and legal reasons,” he adds, “we recognize the persistent demand for access.”
