A.D. Ibarra

-Eagle Pass

When one sees road construction or in this case, the closing of El Indio Highway, you may think to yourself, 'What an inconvenience' before taking the customary detour.

What you may not know is that projects such as this begin as a gleam in the eye of a TxDoT Director or the futuristic vision of an engineer or architect.

The designs which are visible at the new overpasses on the outer loop, the eagles and Texas Star designs came to fruition at meetings back in the 1990's under Mayor Raul Treviño's administration when present TxDoT Eagle Pass Maintenance Supervisor Celestino Hernandez was Planning Director for the city.

"The aesthetics of projects such as these are usually ironed out in meetings and organizational planning sessions between city officials and TxDoT at times many years before the projects are carried out," stated Hernandez who informed The News Gram of all the exciting plans for the new overpass, "The aesthetics of this new project will have very impressive 3-dimensional designs which depict the history of Eagle Pass in the cattle trade in the 1800's and early 1900's."

Hernandez let us in on the design which will be embossed and de bossed images of wagons, horses and cattle on the cattle drives which Eagle Pass cattlemen and cowboys would undertake many years ago, an interesting conceptual design which highlights our history while touching the future with civil engineering, asphalt, concrete and rebar.

The new super-structure will begin to form and be visible to the public within the next thirty days as crews are in the process of drilling 40-60 foot holes in the ground to anchor the massive pillars which will hold up the new overpass.

"The closure of the highway is mostly for public safety purposes, but thanks to the garrison St. overpass and the advent of the Cardona Unit on El Indio, this closure will not impact the fire department," added Hernandez.

Hernandez along with Antonio Perea, P.E., Area Engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation have been on top of the progress of the new super-structure while still maintaining our existing highways and byways as it is their job to insure the upkeep of these as well as looking to the future as much as they possibly can.

“The project is well underway and within 30 days you will actually start seeing the above ground construction”, commented Perea.

"As of the beginning of the month, the project was about 15% complete. Currently the contractor is installing the remaining storm sewer items like pipes and inlets.  Also, the contractor has started the  overpass work by constructing the drill shaft foundations."

As with any TxDOT project the public is encouraged to drive with caution in any construction zone, obey all warnings, and to be safe.

So next time you drive by the construction, rest assured that it'll be very soon that we will all be enjoying the newly designed overpass and reaping the benefits of a lot of work and logistics which needed to be in place in order to see a project of this magnitude come to fruition.