The Bridge Boonville Refused to Lose: The Katy Bridge, Then and Now

If you’ve ridden the Katy Trail out of Rocheport, you’ve ridden the very first stretch of it — this town got the trail’s original section back in 1990, according to Missouri State Parks. But head twenty-some miles downriver to Boonville and you’ll find a piece of the same old MKT Railroad that almost didn’t survive to become part of the trail at all: the Katy Bridge, a 408-foot lift span across the Missouri River that the town spent two decades — and is still spending — fighting to save.

Built for trains, not bikes. The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad built the bridge in 1932, engineering a lift span found nowhere else on the line so tall ships and barges could still pass underneath, according to Missourinet. Trains stopped using it in 1986. By 2005 it had landed on Missouri’s list of most endangered historic places, and owner Union Pacific was talking about dismantling parts of it to reuse on a bridge over the Osage River.

The town said no. A local advocacy campaign — what the Columbia Missourian describes as a genuine community movement — kept the bridge standing, and the City of Boonville eventually took ownership from Union Pacific. The plan ever since has been to turn the old rail crossing into a walking and biking link across the river, tying the Katy Trail through to Howard County on the far bank instead of routing around it.

What’s actually done. The first phase — a new span on the Boonville side plus repairs out to the first truss section — ran about $430,000, largely state transportation-enhancement money, Boonville Special Projects Coordinator Kate Fjell told Missourinet at the time: “We wanted it to be event space or a place where people can watch eagles… You can just enjoy the river.” That phase opened for good in April 2016, when Boonville cut the ribbon on 250 feet of restored decking, handrails, and lighting at the bridge’s south end — the first time in thirty years anyone could walk out onto it, per KRCG. Missouri State Parks Director Bill Bryan called it “a pretty historic day,” and Gov. Jay Nixon framed it as “a bridge to the past and a bridge to the future.”

What’s still ahead. That walkable stretch is well short of the whole span — the full crossing to Howard County, roughly 1,000 more feet of bridge, was estimated at $3.5 to $4 million total when the project started and still isn’t funded. The most recent movement we could verify: the City of Boonville held a public hearing in June 2024 on an Active Transportation Infrastructure Investment Program grant application aimed at the next phase, per the Boonville Daily News. If it comes through, it’ll be the biggest step yet toward finally closing the gap.

What’s there now. Today you can walk out onto the restored south end of the bridge from the Boonville riverfront near the Katy Trail trailhead — river views, the old steel lift towers overhead, and a close-up look at a piece of railroad engineering unlike anything else on the trail. It doesn’t cross the river yet. But it’s still worth the stop next time you’re riding through, or driving down for a weekend on our stretch of the Missouri.