Cumberland Mountain State Park Bridge

The park around the bridge was built by homesteaders. Cumberland Mountain State Park began as part of the Cumberland Homesteads project, the Resettlement Administration effort that moved poverty-stricken families on the plateau onto small farms. The Homestead families built the park with help from the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. It was deeded to the state in 1938, and Alvin C. York served as superintendent until 1940, when he resigned to advise on the filming of Sergeant York. Today it covers 1,720 acres around Byrd Lake.

What the plaque says

Cumberland Mountain State Park Bridge Men of the Civilian Conservation Corps' Company 3464 built this unsuspended bridge between 1935 and 1940, for a 30-acre impoundment of Byrd's Creek. Three thousand five hundred and fifty cubic yards of dirt and rock were excavated and the core, containing 8,000 tons of concrete, is faced with Crab Orchard stone for the 319-foot span. Seven spillways, rising 28 feet above the stream bed, carry the 18-foot roadway approximately 16 feet above water level.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cumberland Homesteads and the Homesteads Tower — 0.9 mi
  The largest of the New Deal's subsistence homestead communities, a plateau district of Crab Orchard sandstone houses around an octagonal stone tower that now holds a museum.
• Muddy Pond Mennonite Community — 22 mi
  A Mennonite farming community in Overton County near Monterey, known for sorghum syrup pressed and boiled each fall and for the farm stores along its roads.
• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 26 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.

More markers nearby

• Kemmer Stand/Tavern — 5.1 mi
• Camp Crossville — 6.8 mi
• John Wood Dodge — 7.5 mi
• Thomas "Big Foot" Spencer — 9.0 mi