Gov. Murray and the Red River Bridge

"The Worst Hard Time" page 109: "When Texas backed a toll bridge across the Red River on the border with Oklahoma, Murray sent the guard to the bridge, nearly provoking a shooting war between the two states. In the midst of the standoff he showed up with an antique revolver, waving it in the faces of Texas Rangers."

from the Oklahoma Department of Transportation

Oklahoma bridges attracted national and even international notoriety in the 1930s not because of their number or size but for a seriocomic episode that occurred on the Red River. Since the Red forms the border with Texas, meaning that both states had to agree on bridge policy--always administratively difficult--the river became a favorite location for private toll bridge operators who wanted a share of the expanding traffic between the two states. Investor-owned suspension bridges, several of them built and promoted by the Austin Bridge Company of Dallas, stood along the river near such towns as Waurika, Courtney, Grady, and Idabel. However, toll bridges became a subject of political reform in Oklahoma and elsewhere during the late 1920s, giving rise to efforts aimed at spending public funds to buy out their owners and "free" the bridges.53
A legal battle erupted in 1931 when Benjamin Colbert's old Red River Bridge Company contended that Texas had failed to buy out its rights to the location and obtained a federal injunction to prevent the opening of a new public bridge nearby on U. S. 69 and 75 that ran between Durant, Oklahoma, and Denison, Texas. The dispute soon enveloped both state governors. In a series of moves and countermoves Oklahoma's Alfalfa Bill Murray called out the National Guard to open the public bridge while Texas Governor Ross Sterling dispatched Texas Rangers to the site to uphold the court order. Although the conflict peacefully ended in a few weeks with a Houston judge dismissing the injunction against the free bridge, the tense moments had made national news and supposedly led Adolf Hitler to believe that domestic discord was eating away at America just as events in Europe began to take shape leading to the Second World War.

Source: Corbett,"Oklahoma Highways," 246-47; Oklahoma State Highway Department, Biennial Report of the State Highway Commission for the Period Ending June 30, 1942 (Oklahoma City: n. p., 1942), 91-92.

The statement about the Red River bridge incident is a little confusing....talking about a "toll bridge"...

The new bridge at the center of the dispute was a toll-free bridge.... Texas had delayed the opening of the free bridge and Murray wanted it open..... Murray did not want the people to have to pay a toll on the toll bridges...so maybe the toll bridges is what Egan is saying that 'Texas backed'.... but the toll-free bridge was finally opened. No war needed.

Handbook of Texas article

Dallas Morning News article

Tulsa World article