Bain's Passes

Letty's Bridge (Gats River, Barrydale)

ThomasAttributedBridge

Thomas Bain is credited as engineer (Artefacts.co.za); he built the Tradouw Pass on which the bridge stood.

This is a bridge, not a pass. This was the first bridge on the Tradouw Pass. It was washed away and replaced; one site describes a white wooden bridge that replaced it, and says the modern Andries Uys Bridge is the third bridge on the site. The pin marks the Tradouw Pass, not the exact bridge.
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BridgeType
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See it on the mapLog your drive

Before you go

Road conditions change with weather, floods, fires and roadworks. Check the latest conditions with the road authority or local tourism office before you leave, and carry offline maps.

About this bridge

Letty's Bridge was the first bridge on the Tradouw Pass, which Thomas Bain built between 1868 and 1873. Floods washed it away, and later bridges followed on the same crossing: a white wooden bridge and then a concrete one, with the modern Andries Uys Bridge described as the third on the site. Artefacts.co.za dates a road bridge over the Gats River to 1877 and records Thomas Bain as its engineer.

Ross's sources agree on the sequence: the original 6 m (18 foot) stone Letty's Bridge was part of the Tradouw road opened in 1873 and was washed away within about two years (the 1875 flood); Bain replaced it in 1879 with a 13 m (40 foot) teakwood bridge, with abutments raised well above the old ones, which Burman describes as having withstood 85 winters by 1963. In 1962 abnormal winter rain raised the river three metres to lap the bridge. The teak bridge was replaced by the concrete Andries Uys Bridge when the pass was tarred in 1979. Burman mislabels a photograph of the teak bridge as "Letty's Bridge". Barrydale's tourism text: in September 1873 Governor Sir Henry Barkly and his wife were invited to a grand luncheon in the middle of the pass; Bain planned a 21-gun salute, using it to blast rock at the same time, and a convict who rushed forward before the all-clear was struck by a rock and killed. The ruins of the South Station, where Bain housed the convicts, lie on the right at the bottom of the pass, and the remains of the teak "White Bridge" are falling into ruin on the next bend above the river. The Andries Uys Bridge is the third bridge on this spot, the first being Letty's Bridge, washed away in floods.

History

Built by
Thomas Bain is credited as engineer (Artefacts.co.za); he built the Tradouw Pass on which the bridge stood.
Built
1877 (Artefacts.co.za). The original stone bridge, built after the pass opened in 1873, is said to have been washed away by floods in 1875, so 1877 may be its replacement; the sources do not say.
Location
On the Tradouw Pass, over the Gats River, about 6 km south-south-west of Barrydale, Western Cape
Later work
Replaced.Washed away by floods (1875 in one account). A white wooden (teak) bridge followed, described by one site as now in ruins; a concrete bridge was built in the 1960s, and the modern Andries Uys Bridge is called the third bridge on the site.
Notes
Dates and details vary by source: Artefacts.co.za lists a road bridge over the Gats River in 1877; Tracks4Africa says Lettie's Bridge was a stone bridge washed away in 1875 and replaced by a white wooden bridge; the Barrydale tourism site calls Letty's Bridge the first bridge on the pass and the Andries Uys Bridge the third. No new source found; the Barrydale tourism page could not be fetched. Ross records no explanation for the name Letty and no builder other than Bain. The 1873 date is the pass opening, not a date given for the bridge itself. Barrydale puts 200 convict labourers on the pass, against about 300 in Hopkins (1955); it gives a 17 km pass length.

Find it

Pin
-33.97560, 20.70180
Approximate position
Pin is the Tradouw Pass position from Wikipedia. The bridge's exact position on the pass was not found.
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Sources

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