Scott County Historical Society
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Bridging Time: The O & W Bridge
This article appeared in the Johnson City Press Kingsport Times News; Saturday, October 19, 2024 Contributor was Calvin Sneed.
By Calvin Sneed
Community Continuator
“Bridging Time” – a monthly series featuring photos by Calvin Sneed – highlights steel truss and concrete arch bridges throughout the United States. During his travels, Calvin has taken thousands of photos of more than l,150 bridges (mostly in the Southeast). He can be reached at [email protected]. This month’s featured bridge is the O& W Bridge.
Deep in the woods of the upper Cumberland Plateau in a gap created by the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, sits a lonely highway bridge. In its heyday as a railroad bridge, it brought two diverse communities together providing commerce, industry and family to the area between Oneida in Scott County. Tennessee, and Jamestown in Fentress County, Tennessee.
The bridge sent a tall Tennessean off to war and then welcomed him home as a highly decorated combat hero. Later, the bridge united governments and combined federal mandates with local historical voices. Today, the O& W Bridge is a tourist attraction.
Back in the late 1800s, industrious Americans were very good at spotting what they considered economic bonanzas, ecological hot spots with bountiful natural resources. In Scott County’s case. it was coal and lumber.
When the Cincinnati Southern Railroad came through from Cincinnati to Chattanooga in 1879, five different private railroads tied into the line within 70 miles of Oneida. One of those railroads was the Oneida and Western (O&W) Railroad, owned and operated by the Tennessee Coal and Lumber Company. Their plan was to reach rich coal and lumber deposits found between Oneida and Jamestown about 38 miles away.
The deeply dissected upper Cumberland Plateau with rocks of sedimentary sandstone and mesophytic forests comprised some of the most rugged, undeveloped terrain in eastern America at the time. Railroad construction to tap that area began in 1913 pushing west from Oneida.
A formidable obstacle stood right in the path of the railroad: the Big South Fork Cumberland River Gorge, a wicked mess of huge boulders and flat rocks sheared off the cliffs through time, some of them as big as houses, while the river raged below untouched. unbothered and undeterred by man’s intrusive colonization. A bridge would have to cross the river channel, or the efforts to tap the rich economic offerings would stop right at the water’s edge.
Bridging Time:
The O & W Bridge
Continued In Next Weeks Issue of Scott County News.
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