Victory Bridge, completed in 1922 at a cost of roughly $1 million, was an early 20th century engineering work built by Masters and Mullen Construction Company of Cleveland, Ohio, with its name honoring the Allied victory in World War I. Jackson and Gadsden Counties paid for the bridge with help from the Federal government. The main section required 1,200,000 pounds of steel and 12,000 cubic yards of concrete, and workers built cofferdams in the river to reach dry bottom for constructing the piers and arches. The structure included seven arch spans, each 110 feet long, and a 100-foot bascule lift span that opened for paddlewheel riverboats; the Converse Bridge Company of Chattanooga, Tennessee, fabricated the drawbridge and Pensacola Shipbuilding Company put it in place. James Austin Mortland of the Florida State Roads Department designed the bridge. The main structure is 2,100 feet long, with an approach across the Pope Lake Swamp west of the river, where male and female prisoners cleared the path six days per week in the deep swamp with cross-cut saws and axes. The main span remained in use until the 1950s, when the state built today’s US 90 bridge. The crossing replaced licensed ferries that had operated here for 100 years after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, and before that travelers crossed the Apalachicola River in dugout canoes. Victory Bridge also served as an important link on the Old Spanish Trail National Highway, America’s first coast to coast tourist route, which linked San Francisco, California, to Jacksonville, Florida. On dedication day in 1922, the paddlewheel steamer John W Callahan, Jr. passed through the lift span, and the completion of modern highways brought an end to the old floating palaces.