Covered Bridges - Tennessee

Bible Covered Bridge
Located in southwest Greene County, approximately 12 miles from Greeneville, The Bible Covered Bridge is a unique bridge.

The Bible Bridge was built in 1923 by the E.A. Bible family as a private bridge to serve their farm. A self-taught engineer, A.A. McLean, who practiced in Greene County, built the bridge. In 1940, the county court requested the county's financial committee to determine a just compensation for Mr. Bible in order to make public his farm road and bridge. The court agreed to pay him $750 for the bridge.

Bible Covered Bridge

The Bible Bridge contains a covered wooden Queenpost truss span 44.7 feet in length, a covered timber stringer 12.5 feet in length, and a timber stringer 11.6 feet in length. The roadway width is 11.8 feet, and the minimum vertical clearance is 8.4 feet. The bridge sits on a concrete substructure of two piers and two abutments.

Bible Covered Bridge is located southeast of I-81 as it passes through Greene County, off US 11-E (State Route 340, Warrensburg Road) at its intersection with the Bible Bridge Road (Parrotsville Quad, 172 SE). Located on a roadside pull-off on a bypassed segment of the Bible Bridge Road, the bridge spans Little Chucky Creek.

Doe River Covered Bridge
This covered bridge is one of the premier and most photographed attractions in Elizabethton TN. It is one of two bridges in Tennessee identified by a Tennessee Historical marker and is included on the National Registry of Historic Sites.

Doe River Covered Bridge

Doe River Covered Bridge is believed to be the oldest such bridge that is still in use for pedestrians. Built in 1882 at a cost of $3,000 by contractor Dr. E. E. Hunter, George Lindamood and three carpenters, it spans the river for 134 feet, resting on earth and limestone abutments. Colonel Thomas Matson, who had engineered the elevated railroad tracks in New York City, was hired by Dr. Hunter to design the bridge and serve as construction chief. The original structure of the bridge was made entirely of wood; primarily mountain oak and white pine beams that were hauled down the steep slopes of the mountains by draft horses and mules, weatherboard of mountain poplar, and shingles cleaved by mallet and form chestnut. The massive pieces of oak flooring were fastened together with hand forged steel spikes and hand threaded bolts. The bridge was termed an "engineering feat" and listed in the Historic Engineering Record. Doe Covered Bridge survived numerous floods, including the great flood of 1901, which destroyed all the other bridges in the county that crossed the Doe River.

Harrisburg Covered Bridge
The Harrisburg Covered Bridge is located in Sevierville south of U.S. 411 (Richardson Cove Quad, 164 SW). Located just off Old State Highway 35, the bridge spans the East Fork of the Little Pigeon River. The community of Harrisburg has contained a bridge at this location since the mid-1800s. Known as the McNutts Bridge, it washed away in 1875. In March of that same year, the Sevier County Court appointed a committee of J.H. Frame, A.E. Murphy, and D.W. Howard to oversee the rebuilding of the bridge. As was common then, local citizens contributed to the replacement of the bridge. Although only $50 could be privately raised, the Harrisburg community provided the wood and labor for the replacement structure. The county donated $25.

Doe River Covered Bridge

The county hired Elbert Stephenson Early to build a covered bridge. Elbert Early (1850-1917), along with several members of his family, moved to the Harrisburg area of Sevier County in the 1870s. Several members of the Early family were skilled carpenters, millwrights, and engineers. They built Murphy Chapel and several residences in the area. In 1877, Elbert Early purchased half interest in the Newport Mill, adjacent to the Harrisburg Covered Bridge, from Alexander Umbarger, a relative of his wife, Clementine (1843-1922).

In the late 1800s, the Harrisburg community grew, and with its several mills, blacksmith shops, a school, a doctor, and a post office, prospered. However, in 1915 the county built a new road that bypassed Harrisburg and the community disappeared.

Over the years, Sevier County has actively maintained the bridge, keeping it open for traffic as many other covered bridges were replaced. In 1952, Bill Baker and a county road crew stabilized the bridge which included the placement of a concrete pier at the center of the truss. As a result, this span functioned as two timber stringers. By the 1970s, the bridge was deteriorated and facing possible demolition when the Great Smokies Chapter and the Spencer Clack Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) raised funds to repair and maintain the bridge as well as seeking listing for it on the National Register of Historic Places. The Harrisburg Covered Bridge was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 for its significance as a rare surviving example of a covered timber truss bridge.

In 1983, the bridge had deteriorated and faced closure, but the county renovated the bridge with new flooring and replaced some of the timber beams, allowing the bridge to remain open but posted it with a 3-ton weight limit.

The bridge, which is 83 feet long, contains a 64-foot timber Queenpost pony truss and an 18-foot steel I-beam span. A covered structure topped with a gable tin roof encases the truss section. The bridge has a curb-to-curb width of 11.4 feet and an out-to-out width of 14.1 feet.

Parks Covered Bridge
Parks Covered Bridge is the only one of Tennessee's four historic covered bridges located in the western portion of the state. Parks Covered Bridge is located in south central Obion County, approximately 20 miles from Union City. Originally, it was located between U.S. 51 (State Route 3 to the west) and State Route 211 (to the east) just north of the Dyer-Gibson County line (Trimble Quad, 428 NW), about one mile north of Trimble. Until 1997, it was located on private property and not open to the public, and the bridge spanned the Obion River Drainage Canal. In 1997, due to erosion at the original site that had endangered the historic bridge, the community salvaged as much material as possible and rebuilt the bridge in a city park, Parks Plaza, in nearby Trimble.

Parks Covered Bridge

According to Mr. Hamilton Parks of Trimble, his grandfather Emerson E. Parks built this bridge around 1904. The Parks or Trimble Covered Bridge, originally spanned a drainage ditch dividing two fields on Parks' farm. Although the bridge's primary purpose was agricultural, local traffic used it until 1928, when the highway department built a state route with a modern bridge nearby. The bridge remained on the Trimble farm until its relocation in 1997.