Sarah Jane Lane

[elenek]

The road began as a wagon trail that connects my home town of Port Arthur with the neighboring town of Port Neches.

Legend has it that during the Civil War, Sarah Jane, whose husband was in the Confederate Army, had heard Union soldiers were passing through. Fearing for the life of her baby, she hid the baby in a bassinet under the bridge until after the soldiers had passed. When she returned for the baby, the waters had risen enough to carry the bassinet away. She spent the rest of the day looking for the baby up and down the creek and Neches River screaming for her child. That night, grief stricken, Sarah Jane hung herself from a tree near the bridge.

Supposedly, if you go to the bridge on dark nights, you can her the baby crying and see Sarah Jane searching for the baby. Origionally, she would never answer you if you called out to her. By the time I got into high school the story had morphed so that Sarah Jane would cause cars on the bridge to stall in an effort to get people to assist in the search, even appearing in the beds of trucks.

When I was in high school, one of the scary things to do was to drive down Sarah Jane Lane late at night with no head lights and to stop on the haunted bridge. Of course this practice has increased the death toll on the road as several fatal crashes occurred when cars missed a curve and crashed into a tree on the side of the road.