The History of Peachtree Corners - Part Five: ‘A Bridge Too – Short?’

Travel down East Jones Bridge Road and you will eventually enter one of the area’s most picturesque locations – Jones Bridge Park.

This 30 acre county park is situated on the Chattahoochee River and feature large pavilions for reunions and outdoor meetings as well as athletic fields, hiking trails and easy access to the river.  It’s also the location of a most peculiar sight – half of a bridge extending out over the Chattahoochee River.

When you first enter the park, if you’ll look to the right you’ll see what appears to be an old, low brick wall.  It is, in fact, the bridge abutment from the Gwinnett County side of the span that was built at the turn of the 20th century.

When settlers first moved into this area they could only get across the Chattahoochee by canoe – though the shoals at this particular area were high enough that, when the river was low, a person could make their way across the smooth rocks on foot.

But the ‘Hooch can be treacherous.  Before it was damned up at Lake Lanier the river frequently flooded.  It still rises without warning even today.

It didn’t take long before a man by the name of John F. Martin came up with the idea of buying the land on either side of the river at this location, then building and operating a ferry.  When he died, he left the land and the ferry to his daughter who married a man by the name of Jones and the land changed names with the new ownership. 

So, when Milton County (now part of Fulton County) and Gwinnett County decided on a joint project to build a narrow bridge across the river, it was named Jones Bridge.

Construction of the steel girder and wooden plank bridge by the Roanoke Steel and Bridge Company was completed in 1904 and served the people of the area well for almost 20 years.  But upkeep of the bridge was expensive and hard times took their toll during the Great Depression.

Faced with bankruptcy, Milton County merged with Fulton County in 1931.  By then the bridge had been closed for several years due to rotting wooden planks that the counties could not afford to keep replacing. 

Then in 1945 something strange occurred.

According to Elliott E, Brack, author of Gwinnett: A little above Atlanta, a group of workers showed up on the Gwinnett County side of the abandoned bridge one day and began dismantling the steel girders.  There were only a handful of people living in the rural area and not much was thought of the activity.  After all, they had noticed that the men had a crane as well as several trucks to do the job – whatever the job was.  When someone finally thought to ask what the workers were doing, the local residents were told that the men had been ordered to take down the old bridge to make way for a new concrete structure to span the Chattahoochee.

It sounded fine to the local residents – that is, until Gwinnett County Commissioner A. J. Corley stopped by to visit a few of the area residents one Sunday afternoon.  When he asked about all of the noise and activity at the old bridge site he was given the same information by the residents that the workers had given them.

Corley became very interested – since Gwinnett County had not approved a concrete bridge project or any other project involving the old Jones Bridge.

Word apparently got to the workers before Commissioner Corley could.  By the next day the men were gone and so was half of the bridge.  They had literally stolen it!

It was wartime and steel was at a premium.  The men – not county workers at all – had reportedly taken the steel to South Carolina and sold it for scrap.

The men were never identified or caught – leaving half a bridge across the ‘Hooch in their wake.