Poole's Mill Bridge is a historic wooden

covered bridge A covered bridge is a timber-truss bridge with a roof, decking, and siding, which in most covered bridges create an almost complete enclosure. The purpose of the covering is to protect the wooden structural members from the weather. Uncovered woo ...

crossing over Settendown Creek (tributary of the

Etowah River The Etowah River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 27, 2011 waterway that rises northwest of Dahlonega, Georgia, Dahlonega, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, ...

) in Forsyth County,

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, built in 1901. It is 96 feet long. Circa 1820,

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

Chief George Welch constructed a

gristmill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that h ...

, a

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...

, and a simple open bridge at the site. Welch continued to run and maintain the mills and bridge until the

Cherokee removal The Cherokee removal (May 25, 18381839), part of the Indian removal, refers to the forced displacement of an estimated 15,500 Cherokees and 1,500 African-American slaves from the U.S. states of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama to ...

in 1838. The land that held the bridge and mills was won in the

land lottery A land lottery or land ballot is a method of allocating land ownership or the right to occupy land by lot. Some examples are: * Moses' allocation of Promised Land territory to the Israelite tribes by lot, as mandated in Numbers 26:55 and 33:54 an ...

by John Maynard of Jackson County,

, who sold the land to Jacob Scudder. Following Scudder's death in 1870 the mill and bridge were bought by Dr. M.L. Pool. A

cotton gin A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); ...

was added at the site in 1920, but cotton was largely abandoned by local farmers when the

poultry farming Poultry farming is the form of animal husbandry which raises domesticated birds such as chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese to produce meat or eggs for food. Poultry – mostly chickens – are farmed in great numbers. More than 60 billion c ...

was introduced. The mill was left in disuse by 1947 and was burned by vandals in 1959. The original bridge that stood at the site was washed away in a flood in 1899. It was decided that a new bridge using the

Lattice truss bridge A lattice truss bridge is a form of truss bridge that uses many small, closely spaced diagonal elements forming a latticework, lattice. The design was patented in 1820 by architect Ithiel Town. Originally a means of erecting a substantial bridge ...

style would be built on the site. The design called for wooden pegs to be driven into holes bored into wooden beams to hold the design together. The beams were cut on site at the saw mill, but the holes were bored in the wrong positions. At this point the construction was taken over by Bud Gentry, who oversaw the redrilling of the holes. The misdrilled holes can still be seen in the bridge's beams. In the mid-1990s the bridge began to sag and a revitalization effort began. A support pier was built in the middle of the creek. During this revitalization private citizens also donated land in the area to allow the creation of Poole's Mill Park.

References

External links

Poole's Mill Park
- Forsyth County
Poole's Mill Covered Bridge
historical marker {{Registered Historic Places Bridges completed in 1901 Buildings and structures in Forsyth County, Georgia Covered bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state) Georgia Land Lotteries Wooden bridges in Georgia (U.S. state) Parks in Georgia (U.S. state) Protected areas of Forsyth County, Georgia Transportation in Forsyth County, Georgia National Register of Historic Places in Forsyth County, Georgia Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state) Lattice truss bridges in the United States

See also

References

Further reading

External links