114 Covered Bridge Road | Euharlee, Georgia 30120

Built in 1886, the covered bridge is the most recognizable landmark in Euharlee. The bridge spans 138 feet to cover the Euharlee Creek and cost $1300 to construct. Washington W. King, son of famed bridge builder Horace King, and resident Jonathan H. Burke were hired by Bartow County for this job. Earlier bridges were destroyed by floods, but this town-lattice style structure is sturdy enough for heavy loads and high enough to avoid flood damage.

The foundation of local stone was embedded deep into the creek bed, and the pine timber trusses were crafted off-site, numbered, and assembled on-site with wooden pegs called trunnels (tree nails). Heavier automobiles and increased traffic endangered the bridge, so a concrete bridge was built in the late 1970s, and auto traffic on the covered bridge was stopped. The bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the oldest remaining covered bridges in Georgia.

Washington Walter King
Washington King was born in Alabama, in early 1840s, to famed bridge builder Horace King and his wife, Frances. Washington, like his mother, was born as a free person of color. His father was enslaved at the time of his birth. As a young man, Washington ran pole-boats on Chattahoochee River until the outbreak of the Civil War. He cut timber and learned the bridge building trade with his father before taking jobs of his own. Following the war, he and his siblings joined their father in the King Brothers Bridge Company.

In 1875, Washington set up a firm in Atlanta. He continued to build with his family, including an 1883 bridge over the Etowah River elsewhere in Bartow County. Washington married Georgia Swift and had two children, Ernest and Annadell. Georgia graduated from Atlanta University in 1874. Annadell taught classical languages at Atlanta University, and Ernest became a civil engineer. He carried on the King legacy; in one instance, Ernest worked on the same bridge at Fort Gaines in 1913 that his grandfather built in 1868 and his father repaired in 1888. Washington died in 1910. Several of his bridges remain intact, including
the bridge at Stone Mountain, Georgia and, of course, Euharlee.