Few remain who can say that they remember riding the old ferry across the Alabama River at Claiborne

The old steel frame bridge at Claiborne, Alabama.

Last week in this space I wrote about the old river ferry at Claiborne. This ferry took travelers back and forth across the Alabama River long before a bridge was built there in the 1930s. Very few living Monroe County residents remember the ferry, but there are still maybe a handful around.

Last Friday morning, my former next-door neighbor George Thomas Jones called me at the office to say that he’d read my column about the ferry, and he believes that he’s probably the only person left in Monroe County who can say that he actually rode the original ferry at Claiborne. George Thomas turns 100 years old later this year. (If you want to see what he looks like, glance up at the top of this page, where you’ll see his picture along with the column he writes each week for The Journal.)

As best that George Thomas can remember, he was probably about six or seven years old when he rode the ferry across the river a few years before a bridge was built there in the 1930s. He said you would drive up to the ferry crossing and if the ferry was on the other side of the river, you had to blow your horn to let the ferryman know you needed to use the ferry. A small boat equipped with an outboard motor powered the ferry across the river.

George Thomas noted that the contract was let the construction of the original steel frame bridge at Claiborne on Sept. 4, 1928. Vincennes Bridge Co. of Indiana was awarded the bid at a cost of $335,090.80. This bridge, which was first known as the “William Wyatt Bibb Bridge,” was dedicated on Sept. 9, 1930. The bridge’s name was changed to the “Claiborne-Murphy Bridge” in 1931.

An almost forgotten fact was that originally the bridge was operated as a toll bridge, George Thomas said. There were 14 other toll bridges in the state at that time, and it cost a quarter to cross one way, but if you returned that same day, you weren’t charged for the second crossing. The toll was lifted in September 1936.

George Thomas and I got to talking about the dollar amounts mentioned above in today’s dollars. Adjusted for inflation, the cost of the original bridge construction would be a little over $5.8 million in 2022. That 25-cent one-way toll between 1930 and 1936 would amount to around $4.33 today.

The modern bridge that’s at Claiborne today was built in the early 1980s. It was constructed beside the old steel frame bridge, which was just south of the present-day bridge. The old bridge, which was unsafe for modern 18-wheelers and double-wide mobile homes being towed, was officially demolished on Aug. 27, 1985.

In the end, I’d like to hear from anyone else in the reading audience who has more information about the old ferry at Claiborne, especially where it was located in relation to the present-day bridge. It would also be interesting to know if there is anyone else left in the county who can say they rode the old Claiborne ferry. No doubt there are others who can shed more light on the history of the old ferry.