Railroad Trestle

The bridge shaped the town. White families had settled the north bank near the present crossing in 1790. The East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad reached Blair's Ferry in 1852, and by 1855 a railroad bridge spanned the river northward, ending the ferry's flourishing river trade. The place was renamed Loudon in 1858, and when Loudon County was created in 1870 the town square was donated as the courthouse site. Within three years the railroad had displaced the river as the county's way to market.

What the plaque says

Railroad Trestle This trestle, of high strategic value, was set on fire Sept. 2, 1863, by Gen. S.B. Buckner, C.S.A., in retiring south before the advance of Gen. Ambrose Burnside from Kingston. The Federals ran off a train from the south end Oct. 28, and the Confederates did likewise December 2-3, in successful retirements northward.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 12 mi
  A reconstructed 1756-57 British fort on the Little Tennessee River in Overhill Cherokee country, besieged in 1760 and surrendered on August 9 of that year.
• Sequoyah Birthplace Museum — 13 mi
  The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' museum on Tellico Lake, near the town where Sequoyah was born, telling how he built the Cherokee syllabary and what the Tellico Dam drowned.
• Fort Southwest Point State Historic Park — 14 mi
  A reconstructed 1797 federal fort on a knoll at the meeting of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers, headquarters of Cherokee agent Return J. Meigs, a state park since July 2026.
• American Museum of Science and Energy — 19 mi
  The Oak Ridge museum that opened in 1949, when the Manhattan Project city's gates opened, in a town whose Black workers were housed in the Gamble Valley hutments.

More markers nearby

• Longstreet's Crossing — 0.7 mi
• Lenoir Cotton Mill — 4.6 mi
• Battle of Philadelphia — 6.4 mi
• National Campground — 6.9 mi