Watson Mill Bridge State Park
County:Madison
City:Comer
Type:State Park, Covered Bridge
The Bridges of Madison County, Georgia
History of the Bridge
Watson Mill Covered Bridge is of the Town Lattice design. Built in 1885, the covered bridge was 236 feet long. When it was moved to its present location the bridge was shortened slightly to 229 feet. It remains the longest covered bridge in the state of Georgia and one of the longest in the United States. The bridge was built to allow access to the mill built by Gabriel Watson in 1798 about 300 feet south of the present location of the bridge on the south fork of the Broad River. A sluice extended past the shoals now below the bridge and provided water to power both a sawmill and grist mill. There were other shops in the small community that developed around the mill.
In 1900 the mill fell victim to technology. In place of the sluice, a raceway was built to deliver water from the dam to the turbine that generated electricity for Jefferson Mills (a textile mill) in nearby Crawford.
With the rise of electricity in rural areas in Georgia during the 1950's it was no longer economical to create power from the dam, and after stripping the site of everything of value the company let it sit until it donated the land to the state of Georgia in 1971.
The state began a restoration effort, which centered around the covered bridge. In 1973 Watson Mill Bridge State Park opened to the public, and since that time has become a frequent stop on Roadside Georgia's itinerary.
Horace King (1807-1885)
Horace King was the most respected bridge builder in west Georgia, Alabama, and northeast Mississippi from the 1830s until the 1880s. He constructed massive town lattice truss bridges over nearly every major river from the Oconee in Georgia to the Tombigbee in Mississippi and at nearly every crossing of the Chattahoochee River from Carroll County to Fort Gaines.
Born as a slave of African, European, and Native American (Catawba) ancestry in Chesterfield District, South Carolina, King moved with his master, John Godwin (1798-1859), a contractor, to Girard, Alabama, a suburb of Columbus, where Godwin had the contract to build the first public bridge connecting those two states. King probably planned the construction and directed the slaves who erected that span. Godwin apparently realized King's intuitive genius as a builder and nurtured those skills. During the early 1840s King served as superintendent and architect of major bridges at Wetumpka, Alabama, and Columbus, Mississippi, without Godwin's supervision.
John Godwin allowed King and his other slaves a great degree of freedom, and in 1846 he freed King, perhaps to protect this valuable asset from his creditors. King might have simply bought his freedom, but the relationship between the former master and slave remained the same. After Godwin's death in 1859, King erected a monument over his grave that declared "the love and gratitude he felt for his lost friend and former master."
In 1839, Horace King married Frances Gould Thomas (1825-64), a free African American woman. The couple had had four boys and one girl. The King children eventually joined their father at working on various construction projects. In the mid-1850s King built Moore's Bridge, over the Chattahoochee River between Newnan and Carrollton, and accepted stock in the enterprise as payment. There they tended the bridge and farmed until 1864, when the Union cavalry burned the span. During this period King moved freely about the South, apparently maintaining a home at Moore's Bridge and one in Girard.
Civil War (1861-65) brought an economic boom to Columbus, and King, like other local contractors, worked for the Confederacy. He supplied timbers and erected a major building for the Confederate navy there. The Alabama governor pressed King into service, against his will, to place defensive obstructions in the lower Alabama River. King claimed that the federal government owed him, as a Unionist, for the confiscation or plundering of his property by Union troops. Immediately after the war ended in 1865, a year after the death of his first wife, he married Sarah Jane Jones McManus, with whom he had no children.
During Reconstruction King became a reluctant Republican politician, serving twice as member of the Alabama House of Representatives, though he rarely occupied his seat during the initial year of his first term. Instead of politics he was busy rebuilding wagon and railroad bridges, grist and textile mills, cotton warehouses, and public buildings. Although he should have earned a large income, he actually experienced some economic reverses, perhaps because he accepted municipal and corporate bonds or over speculated as a contractor, or simply because of the depressed economic condition of the region.
In 1872 King and his family moved to La Grange, where he continued to design and construct bridges, stores, houses, and college buildings until his death, on May 28, 1885. Obituaries praising his building skills appeared in the Atlanta, La Grange, and Columbus newspapers.
Horace King used bridge-building techniques to design the spiral staircase in the Alabama State Capitol so that a central support was not required.
King's children; Washington W. (1843-1910), Marshall Ney (1844-79), John Thomas (1846-1926), Annie Elizabeth (1848-1919), and George (1850-99) continued the work of the King Brothers Bridge Company. They built bridges and various structures in La Grange, Atlanta, and east Alabama. John T. King served as a trustee for Clark College (later Clark Atlanta University) from the 1890s until the 1920s and was one of the contractors who built the Negro Building at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895.
For more than a century the achievements of King have been well known in the Lower Chattahoochee River Valley. Local writers and chambers of commerce proudly proclaim their Horace King bridges or buildings even when there is little or no real historical evidence to verify many of the claims. King's legendary status stems from three factors: he was an excellent bridge builder, the best in the region; he forged a career that was unique for a man of color; and his experience appeared to embody slavery at its best, a kinder and gentler form of servitude. Slavery must not really be that bad, local historians implied, if this slave erected a monument to his master. In this way King unwittingly became an apologist for slavery. In recent years he has been cited as a black Confederate, an African American who supported the Southern cause. If his Unionist testimony reflected his true opinion, however, King shunned any association with the Confederacy.
In 2004 the Horace King Overlook, a deck attached to the historic Bridge House at River Front Park in Albany, was dedicated in King's honor. The overlook's structure includes a miniature replica of one of King's covered bridges.
This is a cache I had been wanting to place for a very long time here at this park. I have gotten permission for the hide from Park manager Jerry Cook. (Thank you Jerry!) In order to claim this cache you will need to start at the above coordinates where you will find B & C of the digits needed for the combination lock on the ammo box located at the final coordinates. A can be found at the second stage and D in the text above. After locating these numbers, continue down the trail by the raceway to a information board to locate A. Once you have all info continue on the trail to the cache. Cache is located near the large observation deck, hidden well. But please use stealth as there is a trail on either side of the cache site. Also make sure cache is covered well as no passerby would spot it. Thank you and Happy Hunting!
A = At the stop along the raceway look at the information board. What is the last digit in the year "It was a fine day for a picnic"
B = At the starting coordinates find the last digit in the set of numbers located on the bottom left of the green sign you are facing.
C = Looking inside the Bridge how many diamond shaped reflectors are seen from one direction. Total of both sides.
D = From the history listed above, how many sons did Horace King have.
FTF Congrats to Bripod!
****For new cachers to the sport: Always remember do not place items such as food, drug related items, knives or sharp objects in caches. The Parks have been gracious to allow geocaches to be placed in them for our enjoyment so lets do our part in keeping them safe for families and children who will be searching for them. Let's not make their job any harder. ****