The Bridge

There are many different theories about the strange occurrences that happen on Jake’s Bridge.  Jake’s Bridge is located on CR137 just off of FM 1660 in Hutto.  It was named after Nelf Jacobsen as is Jake’s Hill Road.  Today, the story has become famous local folklore passed through generations, and may hold only a kernal of truth.  I’m going to give you the story my friends and I grew up with.

The Tragedy

Jake was a cotton farmer in Hutto, Tx.  He lived in a little farmhouse up on a hill that was nestled off of a country backroad just off of FM 1660.  Jake was a family man, raising two children with his wife.   He lived to teach his children the ways of the farm.  Each day the family was early to rise and work in the fields. Lunch and rest were during the heat of the day hours, and back out again they went until the sun set behind the hill.  His wife helped on the farm and handled the household chores.  In the late 1920’s, Jake’s farm ran into misfortune after misfortune.  One season, he lost his crop to a storm, the next to boll weevil (Boll weevil is a beetle that feeds on cotton and is a cotton farmer’s nightmare).  Then one year, things looked like they were turning around.  The season had been kind and produced a good crop to harvest.  Unfortunately, the Great Depression was looming just around the corner.  The cotton economy was hit hard, and the price of cotton dropped from .16 cents down to .06 cents per lb.  The industry was in chaos and cotton farmers were in ruin.  Jake was about to lose his farm and was struggling to feed his family.  He went to the bank and begged the banker for help but was refused.  Feeling desperate and low, he snapped.  In a madman state of mind, Jake returned home and grabbed his gun.  He entered the farmhouse with a cold emptiness in his eyes and riddled his family with bullets.  Still mad, he put them in the family car, drove to a nearby wooden bridge, and pushed the car over the bridge into the Brushy Creek.  After sending the car over the edge, Jake hung himself from that same bridge.  It is said that he chose this particular bridge, Jake’s Bridge, because the banker would drive over it every day on his way home from work.

The Legend

Jake’s Bridge is not the same bridge today as that tragic old wooden bridge. However, the spirits of Jake and his family still linger at the updated concrete bridge. Legend has it that if you stop your vehicle in the middle of the bridge and put it in neutral, the family will push it back off of the bridge to safety before Jake can get to you.

As a local teenager, my friends and I, put this legend to test. It was a Friday night, after a football game when we decided to drive out to the bridge.  This was in the 1990’s, so there was definitely less traffic out there than there is now.  At first, we were skeptical like everyone else. We drove to the middle of the bridge, put the car in neutral, and eased our foot off of the brake.   We looked at each other in disappointment because nothing immediately happened.  It took about 5 seconds, and then the vehicle started slowly creeping backwards across the bridge.  Holy blankety blank!  You may think, “Ya, big deal. All cars roll in neutral.”  But you see, vehicles don’t typically roll uphill.  We were rolling uphill, in neutral, and as soon as we were a safe distance from the bridge, our vehicle would slowly come to a stop.  Each of us took a turn in the driver’s seat just to make sure we weren’t getting suckered.  My friends and I looked for explanations.  Maybe it was an optical illusion.  We even brought a level out to lay on the bridge, and sure enough, we were rolling uphill.  My friends and I revisited the bridge many times.  One night, we were in a single cab truck, and it was really dirty.  We got out and, no joke, there were two small pairs of handprints and one larger set of handprints on the hood.  Many locals will describe the same experience.  I am convinced that Jake’s family was pushing us to safety, getting us off of that bridge before the mad farmer arrived.