
This wooden truss bridge was built in 1912 and rehabilitated in 2009. It serves as an overpass over the Georgia Northeastern Railroad line.

This wooden truss bridge was built in 1912 and rehabilitated in 2009. It serves as an overpass over the Georgia Northeastern Railroad line.
Near the forgotten community of Bannockburn, the Alapaha River marks the boundary between Berrien and Atkinson counties. The Georgia Highway 135 bridge that crosses here normally spans a smallish stream, but if you wonder why it’s so big, check out a Google Earth view of the river at high water. It fills up quickly. [Note the pilings of an old bridge or trestle in the sandbar]. At present (early autumn 2019) the river is low enough to ford and not even get your knees wet. The Alapaha is special to me because Lucy Lake (an Alapaha oxbow in northern Berrien County) was the first place my father took my brother and me river fishing. It had been a popular spot with locals for many years and he had fished there with his father and uncles many times as a young man himself. The river seemed so much bigger to me then.
The Alapaha is one of Georgia’s most beautiful black water rivers. Little known to people not near its banks, it rises in southern Dooly County and meanders southeastward toward its confluence with the Suwannee River near Jasper, Florida. During this course it collects the Wilacoochee, Alapahoochee, and Little Alapaha rivers. An intermittent river, it goes underground through parts of its course, especially in Hamilton County, Florida. A famous locale there, near Jennings, is the Dead River Sink.
The earliest known reference to the Alapaha was made by Hernando de Soto’s expedition. It noted a village near the Suwannee known as Yupaha, in the 16th century.
Like all roads on Sapelo, the road to Cabretta Beach is devoid of even a stop sign and it’s usually a rough ride.
One of the prettiest views on the island is Blackbeard Creek as seen from the wooden bridge, built by the Department of Natural Resources.
Blackbeard Creek separates Cabretta Beach from Blackbeard Island, which is visible in the distance from the bridge.
Built as a privately-owned toll bridge spanning the Savannah River at the Georgia-South Carolina state line, the Smith-McGee Bridge was purchased by Georgia and South Carolina in 1926 and the toll removed. It’s a good example of the once-common camelback through truss design.
It was replaced with a new bridge in 1983. The eastern section of the bridge has been removed but it is open to pedestrians and is a popular spot for viewing the river.
At 7779 feet, the Sidney Lanier Bridge has the longest span in Georgia. Reaching a height of 480 feet, it’s a replacement for the 1956 vertical-lift bridge of the same name. On 7 November 1972 the African Neptune struck the earlier bridge, resulting in ten deaths. On 3 May 1987 that bridge was again struck, this time by the Polish freighter Ziemia Bialostocka. Like Savannah’s Talmadge Bridge, the new bridge’s cable-stayed construction is more stable and allows the necessary greater height for the booming container ship traffic of the Georgia coast.