ASHLEY RIVER BRIDGE, _on the Coastal Highway (17)_: Until the first of July, 1921, the bridge over the Ashley River at the head of Spring Street was privately owned. At that time the county of Charleston acquired it by purchase and at once the toll was taken off. In the spring of 1926, the present handsome and commodious concrete bridge was formally opened. It is slightly down-stream from the rather ramshackle wooden bridge. It cost a million and a quarter dollars. It is wide enough for four vehicles abreast and on each side is a sidewalk for pedestrians. Its huge bascule leaves provide plenty of clearance for the greatest seagoing vessels. This bridge, a memorial to Charleston soldiers who lost their lives in the World War, is an essential link in the Coastal Highway between the provinces of eastern Canada and the keys of Florida, thence by “ferry” to Havana, Cuba. It connects the city of Charleston with all the trans-Ashley region. From the town it leads to James Island (on which are the Country Club and the Municipal Links, Riverland Terrace and Wappoo Hall) and the popular Folly Beach; by way of James Island to the Stono River bridge which is near the famous Fenwick Hall, a great estate in pre-Revolutionary years; it leads to Walterboro, Beaufort, Port Royal (site of the earliest French colony) and Savannah and Jacksonville; it leads to the Ashley River Road for St. Andrew’s Church, Middleton Place, Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, Drayton Hall, Runnymede, Wragg Barony and Bacon’s Bridge over the upper Ashley River. In the War Between the States the old bridge was burned and after Appomattox more than fifteen years elapsed before it was restored. Near the Ashley River Bridge in St. Andrew’s Parish are sites of the earliest English plantations. Quite near it Eliza Lucas, daughter of the Governor of Antigua and mother of the Generals Charles Cotesworth and Thomas Pinckney, carried forward her indigo experiments. David Ramsay says that the indigo planters doubled their capital every three or four years.