It was opened in 1855, named after Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and connected Tetschen to the major railroad from Dresden to Prague.

[1] Local entrepreneurs, textile manufacturer Johann Münzberg, and Count Franz Anton von Thun, promoted the building of a bridge.

They founded a stock company, and Thun provided a section of his garden for the bridge head.

On 1 July 1917, Austria took over the responsibility of the bridge from Tetschen, and promised to pay the shareholders of the Kettenbrücken-Aktiengesellschaft, which had financed the building, restoration, and maintenance.

The bridge, largely built from wood, was hard to maintain and no longer fit for growing traffic.