The route once known as the Old Georgetown Road existed by 1854 and crossed the Leon River here, where a ferry operated as early as that year under local entrepreneur and land developer R.G. Grant. A Bowstring Truss Bridge erected near here in 1882 became Coryell County's first metal truss bridge, but major floods in 1899 and 1900 damaged it and led the County Commissioners Court to authorize a replacement. The George E. King Bridge Company of Des Moines, Iowa, built the present structure in 1904 with steel construction, wood decking, original lattice railings, pin-connected members, and elaborate stone abutments. Its overall length is 141 feet from end to end, allowing for the 4-foot depth of masonry piers supporting the bridge; it consists of a 137-foot Pratt through truss span and a 5-foot timber approach span, and is one of few such bridges surviving in Texas. The 1904 bridge served as a major east-west artery for Central Texas, and when the road became part of State Highway 7 in 1917 and was renamed U.S. Highway 84 in the 1930s, it remained an important crossing before being restored and rededicated in 1994.