Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge (bat colony)

The Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, completed in 1910 and renamed in 2006 for former Governor Ann Richards, spans Lady Bird Lake at the foot of Congress Avenue. It is home to a seasonal colony of Mexican free-tailed bats that emerge nightly from spring through fall; estimates commonly cite hundreds of thousands to over a million bats during peak season. The bridge's bat colony is frequently described as the largest urban bat colony in North America and has made the structure a notable example of urban wildlife using legacy infrastructure.