The Austin Peay Bridge

Governor Peay took office in a state of mud. Tennessee had only 244 miles of paved state highway, and few bridges spanned its major rivers. He paid for roads with new taxes, including a gasoline tax, and by his death in 1927 the paved system had grown to more than 4,000 miles, with a paved highway between Memphis and Bristol. More than half of state spending under him went to road projects. Nationally he is remembered instead for signing the Butler Act against teaching evolution; this bridge, opened in 1928, is the kind of road he built.

What the plaque says

The Austin Peay Bridge The Austin Peay Bridge once spanned the river here. Built in 1928 by Montgomery and Parker of Rockport, Indiana, and the Nashville Bridge Company for the Tennessee Department of Highways and Public Works, the bridge replaced a nearby ferry crossing. It was named in honor of Governor Austin Peay, Tennessee's "Road Building Governor." Before its demolition in 1994 the Austin Peay Bridge contained 3 trusses composed of steel members in triangular patterns which distributed weight allowing the bridge to carry loads. The main span was a rare K-truss, named for its "K" configuration.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cummins Falls State Park — 9.5 mi
  A 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.
• Standing Stone State Park — 15 mi
  A New Deal park on Mill Creek named for a vanished stone that Native peoples revered and railroad builders blasted, with a lake, 1930s cabins and a marbles championship.
• Red Boiling Springs — 16 mi
  A Macon County spa town built around red sulphur springs, with five kinds of mineral water, red-painted pumps and the surviving hotels of a resort that once held more than a dozen.
• Cookeville Depot Museum — 16 mi
  The 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.

More markers nearby

• Alvan Cullen Gillem July 29, 1830 - December 2, 1875 — 1.2 mi
• Orion Clemenes 1825-1897 — 1.3 mi
• Michaux's Discovery 1796 — 1.3 mi
• Judge John Jordan Gore — 3.0 mi