The Stovall Mill Covered Bridge

 The Stovall Mill Covered Bridge on Chickamauga Creek, White County, GA.  

One of the shortest covered bridges in Georgia, although not the shortest, is the Stovall Mill covered bridge on Chickamauga Creek in northeast Georgia's White County. At 38 feet in length, it is just four feet longer than the Lula Bridge, east of Lula, Georgia on a now non-existent road.

Built by Will Pardue in 1895, using a modified Queen post truss design, the bridge takes its name from Fred Stovall, who operated a nearby grist mill for many years. The bridge replaced an earlier one which washed away in the early 1890s. It was in daily use until 1959, when the road was relocated away from the bridge. It is also called Sautee Bridge, Nacoochee, Bridge, Chickamauga Bridge, and Helen Bridge, because of its proximity to the tourist town of Helen. Now owned and maintained by the White County Historical Society, it's just a quick 2.7-mile drive up GA 255 from the Old Sautee Store -- another place you don't want to miss if you're in the Helen area.

North Georgia has two Chickamauga Creeks, by the way. The one in northeast Georgia that flows under the Stovall Mill bridge is smaller and flows into the Chattahoochee River just a few miles south of the bridge. The Chickamauga Creek in northwest Georgia is a larger and longer stream, beginning in McLemore Cove just a few hundred yards from our former home, and flowing north, eventually joining the Tennessee River at Chattanooga.

(The Stovall Bridge photo is another Olympus OMD-E-M5 photo, this time made with the Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 14-140mm f3.5-5.6 lens which stayed pretty much glued to one of my EM-5 bodies.)

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Red Oak Creek Covered Bridge

The last of the Horace King-built bridges in Georgia.

 From the 1840s to 1900 and even beyond, much of the traffic in the Deep South crossed its streams on wooden bridges built by the legendary Horace King, a master bridge builder who was actually a freed slave

The bridge over Red Oak Creek was built by King in the 1840s. It's Georgia’s oldest covered bridge, and at 391 feet, the longest, if one includes the approaches. The covered portion is about 140 feet long, using Town lattice construction with criss-crossed planks held together by approximately 2,500 wooden pegs. This is the last of King's bridges still in use in Georgia.

If you should happen to visit Albany, Georgia be sure to visit the Bridge House on Front Street, which King built in 1858, along with a bridge over the Flint River. The bridge was swept away by a flood in 1897, but the Bridge House still stands and is now the centerpiece of Riverfront Park and serves as Albany's Welcome Center.  

To get to the Red Oak Creek covered bridge, a good place to start is the courthouse square in Fayetteville. Go south 27 miles on GA 85 to the one-stoplight village of Gay. Nothing much happens in Gay, except on the first full weekends in May and October, in which case you may find yourself in the middle of a traffic jam as thousands flock to the Gay Cotton Pickin' Fair, an arts, crafts, and antiques festival on the old Gay family farm. An institution that dates back to 1972, the Cotton Pickin' Fair is one of the Southeast Tourism Society's Top Twenty Events.

From Gay, continue south on GA 85 for about five miles to the well-marked intersection with Covered Bridge Road on your left. Red Oak Creek Covered Bridge is about a mile back, and, unlike many old bridges, you can still drive on it.

(This is just one part of Tour Three, which you can read about and follow if you like, in my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia, now in its second edition. The covered bridge photo was made with an Olympus OMD-E-M5 digital camera, a delightfully small but very precise piece of equipment about the same size as my all-time favorite, the Olympus OM-2n film camera.) 

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone

McLemore Cove in the Mist

McLemore Cove. Mist in the valley below Pigeon Mountain.

We lived in McLemore Cove for 33 years and were surrounded by a varied palate of beauty every day. With Lookout Mountain on our west and Pigeon Mountain on the east, we had a ringside seat for an ongoing performance of land, sky, and weather.

This is the driveway to the home of our neighbor, George David Queener. You can see a bit of his house at the far right side of the photograph. George and his wife Mary Ellen owned the GDQ Ranch, with about 850 acres and 350 head of purebred cattle. They sold us our land, just a tiny slice off their empire, and were good neighbors. George was known as a man of hot temper, but we seemed to stay in his good graces.

The Cove is thinly populated, with many large farms. Sometimes it could be a bit lonely, especially for Louise, but she joined other Cove women for a weekly Bible study at the Community Center and made many friends there. The Cove people were always sweet-natured, neighborly and helpful. 

We're gone from the Cove now, and happy where we are. But we miss the Cove and our friends there and will always have fond memories of the life we built in McLemore Cove. 

(I don't remember the camera I used for this photo, nor exactly when I made it. Probably the late '90s. But it was on film, which was certainly Fujichrome, and the camera was most probably a Canon EOS A2.)

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Way It Used to Be

The Old Mill at Pigeon Forge as it looked in the early 1970s.

 A favorite weekend getaway for the young Jenkins family in the early 1970s was the Pigeon Forge -- Gatlinburg area. We always stayed in Pigeon Forge, because the motels were cheaper and the town was much less crowded, even then.

Built in 1830 by Isaac Love and his sons, the mill has had an interesting history. In addition to grinding meal, it has powered looms to make uniforms for local Union soldier volunteers (East Tennesseans substantially supported the North during the Civil War), powered a sawmill, and ran a generator to provide electricity for part of Pigeon Forge. Nowadays it houses a restaurant and gift shop.

The mill looks much the same today, but may be a little hard to find in the amazing clutter of restaurants, hotels, stores, and tourist traps that make up present day Pigeon Forge. I'm glad we were able to enjoy the town before it became a massive traffic jam. 

Even as far back as 1985 the traffic had already gotten out of hand. One October weekend we went to Knoxville to visit our son Rob and his wife Bonnie. He was working on his master's degree at the University of Tennessee at the time. Saturday morning it was decided that we would go to Gatlinburg. It took us nearly four hours to go the four or five miles from Sevierville to Pigeon Forge! Since then, we have avoided going to the area on weekends. Now, even weekdays are one endless jam-up.

We camped at a small campground near Pigeon Forge for three weeks last summer (2022). Our campsite was in my opinion the nicest we've ever had. But leaving the campground to go anywhere was a major chore. We won't go there again.

I'm glad I can remember the old mill and Pigeon Forge the way they used to be.

(The photo was made on Kodachrome film, but I have no idea what camera I used. Most likely, a Nikkormat.)

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.