Covered Bridges in Georgia

Covered bridges were designed for purely functional reasons, and the first bridges were made from wood, which rapidly deteriorated from the weather. Covering the exposed wood protected the bridges, extending their usefulness. Today, covered bridges exude a certain romantic quality by evoking simpler times. That makes them irresistible to some filmmakers. The 1995 movie "The Bridges of Madison County" featured a photographer on assignment in Iowa to capture the beauty and mystique of the covered bridge. Although Georgia was not the first state to have a covered bridge -- New York was -- that fact in no way diminishes the rich history of the covered bridges left intact statewide. Georgia has more than a dozen covered bridges, so if you have time to visit only a few, plan to see some that are notable for having a certain distinction.

Oldest Covered Bridge

• 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.

Most Visited Covered Bridge

• 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.

Longest Covered Bridge

• 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.

Shortest Covered 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.

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Covered Bridges in Kansas

Covered bridges, which date back to the 19th century in the U.S., were built for the prosaic purpose of protecting wooden bridges from the elements, but they've become a favorite must-see destination for connoisseurs of the historic and the scenic. The 1995 movie, "The Bridges of Madison County," as well as the bestselling novel on which it was based, brought a boost in popularity to covered bridge tours nationwide -- but unlike Iowa, where the story is set, Kansas doesn't have many historic covered bridges of its own. All of its 19th-century bridges are gone, and what bridges remain date back no further than the 1970s.

The Bridges of Southeast Kansas

• Butler County is home to the Riverside Bridge, in El Dorado's Riverview Park. The covered section of this bridge, built in 2004, spans 40 feet across the Walnut River. The entire bridge is 136 feet long, with uncovered sections of 48 feet long at each end. El Dorado also has a covered walkway, built in 2007, which extends about half a mile from the junction of Main Street to the railroad bridge on the south side of Central Avenue. Mound City, in Linn County, has the 18-foot covered Jayhawk Walk Bridge, located in Mound City Historical Park. Although many of the buildings in the park date back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, the bridge itself was built in 1997.

The Bridges of Northeast Kansas

• Northeast Kansas has the highest concentration of covered bridges found in the state -- a grand total of five, including the oldest, Johnson County's Whispering Hills Bridge, built in 1970. Douglas County's Don Jones Bridge, which crosses a tributary of Coal Creek, dates back to 1972, and Jefferson County's Oak Holler Bridge was constructed in 1971. Jefferson County is also home to King's Bridge and the Vernon Robb Bridge, both dating from 2000. The latter has the distinction of being the only two-span covered bridge in the state. Shawnee County's 60-foot Ted Ensley Bridge is the newcomer of the bunch, developed as an addition to Topeka's Ensley Gardens in 2004.
• The One and Only Covered Bridge of Western Kansas

• In western Kansas water is scarce and bridges are few. Many of its early bridges were nothing more than low cement culverts placed in creek beds, and did not even span the creeks from bank to bank. This part of the state can only claim one covered bridge, a small covered walking bridge that spans a section of pathway around Lake Atwood, which is located in the northwest corner of the state about 30 miles north of Colby. The bridge is of wooden construction and is painted red.

The Lost Bridges of Leavenworth County

• Leavenworth County, in northeastern Kansas, was once home to two covered bridges that now live on only in a few old photographs. Not much is known about the Jarbalo Bridge, other than a brief mention in an old pamphlet put out by the Leavenworth County Historical Society and Museum. While the pamphlet's date is unknown, it mentions an article about this bridge that had recently appeared in the "Mail and Breeze," a newspaper that was published between the 1880s and 1930s. A photograph of this bridge in the Kansas Historical Society archives dates from the 1930s. The Springdale covered Bridge, documented in several photos taken by the Historic American Buildings Survey and currently held by the Library of Congress, was at one point the state's sole surviving covered bridge. It was built around 1859 and repaired in 1946, but was struck by lightning and burned in 1958 to disappear for good from the Kansas landscape.

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