Be a Bridge Builder

By Bill Crane

You almost always know bridge builders when you meet them.They bring people together, share aspirations, and inspire others. DeKalb County government’s CEO, Michael Thurmond, is a bridge builder.

Thurmond recently took the lead in crediting, honoring, remembering, and paying tribute to an illustrious family of bridge builders, mainly Washington W. King (1843-1910) and his father Horace King (1807-1885), patriarch of the bridge-building King family. In 1891, in Athens, Georgia, Washington W. King was selected to engineer, design, and construct an all-wood-covered bridge that was to provide passage across the Oconee River in Athens, from rural eastern Clarke County to downtown Athens, College Avenue, and the University of Georgia.

The Stone Mountain Memorial Association had the W.W. King Bridge added to the National Register of Historic Places. On September 16, 2022, the bridge was formally renamed and dedicated in honor of W.W. King and his family. On hand for the ceremony were two King family descendants, Rebecca King Rosenberg and her sister Kathleen King Hawrylak. The sisters are direct line descendants of W.W. King’s brother, John Thomas King (1846-1926), making them great-great-great granddaughters of Horace King and great-great grandnieces of W. W. King.

The covered bridge at Stone Mountain Park, now rededicated as the Washington W. King/College Avenue Bridge, is 131 years old and still doing its job most every day, connecting the more natural southeastern side of Stone Mountain Park to Indian Island across a narrow inlet of Stone Mountain Lake.

The all-timber bridge was constructed by hand, just twenty-five years after the Civil War, without the benefit of gas or electric power tools or transport. The King family would build dozens of similar spans across the American south. Patriarch Horace King learned carpentry and engineering while enslaved to John Goodwin (1798-1859). With the support of his once slave master, with whom Horace King had constructed numerous bridges and other structures, Horace King secured his emancipation and freedom in 1846. Horace King and his wife, a free woman, Florence Gould Thomas (1825-1864), would raise five children, four brothers and one sister, who would enter the bridge building business. Following his father’s death, W.W. King would relocate with his wife and family to Athens, Georgia to build out his enterprise, the Bridge Company.

“It speaks to who they were, who we are, and more importantly, to who we can become,” said Thurmond during some occasionally emotional remarks about the importance of honoring a black man, the son of a freed slave, as well as his family, for their contributions to Georgia, and most specifically, to bridge building, in a park created as a Confederate memorial.

The bridge in Athens was built for horse and buggy and lasted well into the automobile era. The wooden bridge was seriously damaged

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