Poole's Mill Bridge is a historic wooden
covered bridge 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, north of Atlanta. On Matthew Carey's 1795 ...
) in
Forsyth County,
Georgia,
United States, built in 1901. It is 96 feet long.
Circa 1820,
Cherokee Chief George Welch constructed a
gristmill, a
sawmill, and a simple open bridge at the site. Welch continued to run and maintain the mills and bridge until the
Cherokee removal in 1838.
The land that held the bridge and mills was won in the
land lottery by John Maynard of
Jackson County,
Georgia, 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 (); a ...
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 chicke ...
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 bridge is a form of truss bridge that uses many small, closely spaced diagonal elements forming a lattice. The lattice Truss Bridge was patented in 1820 by architect Ithiel Town.
Originally a design to allow a substantial bridge to be ma ...
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.
See also
*
List of covered bridges in Georgia
References
Further reading
* ''Poole's Mill Covered Bridge'', by Katie Caldwell, ''Georgia Backroads'', vol. 7, No. 2, Summer 2008, p. 6.
External links
Poole's Mill Park- Forsyth County
Poole's Mill Covered Bridgehistorical 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