WATCH: Video shows moment high water wipes out swinging footbridge in Arkansas

A tourist site between Oark and Catalpa was swept away by floodwaters Saturday.

A 150-foot-long swinging bridge has spanned the Mulberry River between the two Johnson County towns for about a century, although periodically it has been destroyed by floods.

Denise Gosnell, who works at Oark General Store, said she went to check on the bridge Saturday afternoon and saw that part of it was already underwater. A support had given way.

"It was a lot of water," she said.

Gosnell said Tuesday that she hasn't been back to the site since the water receded, so she doesn't know how twisted and mangled the bridge is now.

Gosnell said tourists make the trip to the northern part of Johnson County to visit the general store and hike to the swinging bridge, which is 2.7 miles to the east.

"It's a big sight-seeing trip," she said. "A lot people come. It's a big word-of-mouth thing. It's like the burgers here. People want the burgers, and they want the bridge."

Gosnell said the bridge sometimes looks like overkill, rising high above a riverbed that is often just barely damp. But the Mulberry is a raging river when it's at flood stage.

Cathie Brown owns the property where the bridge is located. Gosnell said Brown often drives through the riverbed to get to her house, but during high water the swinging bridge was the only way out of her property. Brown didn't return telephone messages Tuesday.

In 2004, Brown told a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that three generations have used the swinging bridge, which crosses the river and leads down a steep set of stairs.

"My grandpa built it about the turn of the [20th] century," she said.

In December 2015, Brown's daughter Cammie Johnson started a Go Fund Me campaign to help rebuild the swinging bridge after it was destroyed by a storm Dec. 28 of that year.

Funding didn't reach the goal, but the bridge was still rebuilt.

According to Bridgehunter.com, the swinging bridge also was washed out in 2014.

A project has been underway to stabilize the eroding stream bank on Brown's property, with help from the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership.

"With each flood, my mother's land is eroded more and more," Johnson wrote on the Go Fund Me page. "The river is changing course, and it needs to be redirected back to its original place so that my mother will still have land. It has eroded so much that it has washed out the tree that has held the swinging bridge for years."

Metro on 05/03/2017