Qualla: Wil-Cox Bridge

Wil-Cox Bridge: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. Louis Beard built the first bridge over the Yadkin at Trading Ford in 1818 - a toll bridge serving the mail route between Washington, D.C. and New Orleans. A second toll bridge went up in 1899 on the same piers. The bridge that stands there today, the Wil-Cox, opened in 1924 and carried U.S. 29, U.S. 70, and NC 150 across the river between Rowan and Davidson counties for nearly nine decades before retiring into pedestrian service. Seven open-spandrel concrete arches - each 150 feet long, the full span nearly 1,300 feet - cross the Yadkin, named for two highway commissioners - W.E. Wilkinson of Charlotte and Elwood Cox of High Point - whose surnames were spliced into a hybrid most people now pronounce without thinking about the men behind it.

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Wil-Cox Bridge: Trading Ford, Long Before the Bridge

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. The location where the Wil-Cox crosses the Yadkin was a trading path for centuries before any European thought to span the river with timber and stone. Native peoples used the ford to cross between the Piedmont uplands and the river valleys to the east. The colonial mail route fr...

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Wil-Cox Bridge: Stoneman's Defeat at Fort York

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. Just upstream from the bridge sits the bluff where Confederate forces built Camp Yadkin, also called Fort York, in the closing months of the Civil War. On April 12, 1865 - three days after Lee surrendered at Appomattox - Union Major General George Stoneman attempted to destroy th...

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Wil-Cox Bridge: Almost Demolished

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. By the late 1990s, the Wil-Cox was tired. Bigger highways had replaced its role, and the steel girder companion bridge built in 1951 was carrying most of the north and east-bound traffic. The state considered demolishing the Wil-Cox once the new I-85 bridges were complete. Salisb...

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Wil-Cox Bridge: The Park Around the Bridge

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. By the early 2020s, Yadkin River Park was drawing six hundred visitors a day on the Davidson County side. In March 2021, Davidson County and Friends of Rowan announced a combined $150,000 gift for improvements - dog park, sidewalks, parking. Several million more dollars were need...

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Wil-Cox Bridge: A Century of Concrete

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. The Wil-Cox turned one hundred years old in 2024. The Salisbury Post ran a piece marking the centennial as the surrounding parks continued to grow. The 1818 toll bridge and the 1899 toll bridge are long gone. The 1951 steel girder bridge has been demolished. The new I-85 bridges ...

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