It was officially opened to traffic on 11 November 1895 and named in honour of the NSW Governor Sir Henry Robert Brand, 2nd Viscount Hampden.

The Hampden Bridge was subsequently converted to local traffic use, then pedestrian use only, and finally demolished in 2014.

Cr Peter Dale argued that demolition was the only option since keeping the Hampden Bridge would cost the Wagga Wagga City Council hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain after an engineer looked at the bridge and estimated that the cost for repairs would be $100,000.

A report by Harry Trueman from the Institute of Engineers Australia stated that the Hampden Bridge is one of the biggest and most important timber bridges in the state since it was originally built to take produce from the Riverina to Sydney; however he is not confident that the Hampden Bridge could be saved due to the amount of money needed to restore it to a good condition, which would cost the Council millions of dollars and involve high ongoing maintenance costs.

[17] By November 2007, Councillors attend a number of workshops on estimated costs of rehabilitation and demolition.

[23] By 20 August 2014 the controlled demolition of the bridge skeleton, using the induced collapse method, was completed.