Harrisburg Covered Bridge

The county court ordered this crossing in March 1875, after a flood had carried off the earlier McNutts Bridge at the same spot on the East Fork. Three commissioners ran the project, local donors gave $50 and the county added $25. The finished bridge is a king post truss with a 64-foot main span inside an overall length of 88 feet. By the 1970s demolition was being weighed, until Daughters of the American Revolution chapters raised the money to rehabilitate it, and it joined the National Register in 1975. Repairs in 2004 raised its load limit to 15 tons.

What the plaque says

Harrisburg Covered Bridge 400 yards south, this bridge was built over the East Fork of the Little Pigeon River in 1875 by Elbert Stephenson Early, an area resident who owned Newport Mills. The bridge had deteriorated and its loss was threatened until it was restored in 1972 through the joint efforts of the Great Smokies Chapter and the Spencer Clack Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Newfound Gap — 18 mi
  The lowest drivable pass through the Smokies, at 5,046 feet on the Tennessee and North Carolina line, where Roosevelt dedicated the park in 1940 and Kuwohi's Cherokee name was restored in 2024.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 25 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Cades Cove — 25 mi
  A Smokies valley ringed by mountains, once the Cherokee hunting ground of Tsiyahi and later a farming community of 685 people, kept by the park after its families were bought out.
• Blount Mansion — 25 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.

More markers nearby

• New Salem Baptist Church — 4.0 mi
• Isaac Dockery — 4.7 mi
• John Porter McCown — 4.7 mi
• The McMahan Indian Mound — 4.8 mi