Georgia's oldest covered bridge, Big Red Oak Creek Bridge, was built in the 1840s and is still in use today. It is just 12 miles from Warm Springs, Georgia, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt vacationed to take therapeutic baths in the mineral springs for his polio. The bridge, in Meriwether County, is the only covered bridge left standing in the state that was built by Horace King, the most famous covered bridge builder in Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama. King was a slave who learned to build bridges from his owner. After King was freed, he continued to build bridges and started a construction company with his three sons. The Big Red Oak Creek Bridge spans 252 feet, is supported by a town lattice truss, and is the longest wooden bridge, but not the longest covered bridge, in the state. Some of this bridge is not covered. King is now recognized as being an engineering genius.
Washington W. King, Horace King's son, built the covered bridge now called Stone Mountain Bridge. It was originally named Effie's Bridge in honor of a popular area bordello in Clarke County, Georgia, home of the University of Georgia in Athens. The bridge features a beautiful lattice design and is supported by a town lattice truss. It was closed because of flood damage done to it and was moved to a safer place in 1965: DeKalb County's Stone Mountain Park, the most visited attraction in Georgia, which sees millions of visitors every year. Stone Mountain Bridge is currently 151 feet long, shortened from its original 162 feet. It was built in 1891.
Washington W. King also built the Watson Mill Bridge, famous for being the longest covered bridge in Georgia at 229 feet. The strikingly beautiful bridge, built in 1885, is the featured attraction in Watson Mill Bridge State Park in Comer, Georgia, not far from the University of Georgia. The bridge was named after Gabriel Watson, who built a sawmill and a gristmill; the bridge provided water needed to power the mills. A town lattice supports this bridge. Children delight in playing in the shoal beneath the bridge.
The Stovall Mill Bridge is in White County, near Helen, Georgia, a popular re-creation of an alpine village. It is the shortest covered bridge in Georgia at 36 feet. This bridge is named after Fred Stovall, who bought the gristmill, shingle mill and sawmill on the property in 1917 and ran it for many years. The bridge was built in 1895. The Stovall Mill Bridge, built by Will Pardue, features a queen-post truss and runs across the Chickamauga Creek in northeast Georgia -- not the more famous Chickamauga Creek in northwest Georgia. A nearby bed-and-breakfast inn, the Stovall House, provides convenient lodging for visitors to take in the area and see the bridge that appeared in the 1950s film "I'd Climb the Highest Mountain," starring Susan Hayward and William Lundigan.
