The Road That Reached the River

Before it became a question on an old map, this was somebody’s way to school.

My father-in-law remembers riding a school bus across the Tallapoosa here, with Harold Mize behind the wheel. He remembers riding his bicycle across, too. Those memories give the old Bethlehem Church Road crossing something a map cannot: a place in an ordinary childhood.

Our search began with a practical question about the road leading to our land. On the south side, an old roadbed runs toward the bridge from the Kelley Loop direction. We wanted to understand where it went and how people had used it.

That question led us into county maps, recorded deeds and photographs taken from airplanes decades ago. The more we looked, the more the bridge became part of a larger story: families on both banks, a church, roads, and a countryside where people worked as well as lived.

A road on the map

One of the clearest clues is on a 1985 county highway map. It shows a road numbered 204 leading to the crossing, with a connection to road 203 on the Kelley Loop side. Bethlehem Church and Spearman Lake help place the route in the surrounding countryside. [1]

That same map helps keep two bridge stories apart. Farther downstream, Road 189 crosses near Poplar Springs, south of Munroe Mill Road. That is the crossing documented in the federal HAER GA-50 bridge photographs. Our crossing is farther north, near Bethlehem Church and Spearman Lake. The separate road numbers and map positions establish that these are different bridges. [1] [13]

On paper, the connection is easy to follow. Standing beside the river today, you have to supply some of the picture yourself.

A bicycle and a school bus

My father-in-law remembers more of it. He places the crossing’s closure roughly between 1975 and 1985. Those are family recollections, not dates or names independently confirmed in county records.

We haven’t pinned those memories to an exact year. But they give the search a human scale: a bicycle ride, a driver’s name, and a school bus making its rounds.

Today, the bridge is what makes you stop and look.

The crossing from above

A federal aerial photograph dated January 26, 1972 gives the memory a visible setting. A narrow, straight span crosses the river, and the road continues from its south end. We matched the place by the river bends, the church area and the adjoining roads. The photograph documents a span on that date; it does not tell us who was using it. [5]

The February 29, 1988 photograph shows the same bends and an approach corridor, but its blur leaves the bridge’s condition unresolved. It cannot establish that vehicles could still cross, or prove that the deck had been removed. An approach remaining visible is different from a crossing remaining open. [6]

Compare the 1988 crossing detail

Land on both sides

The land records tell another part of the story. A deed recorded in 1993 describes an older tract on both sides of the Tallapoosa, including 18 acres south of the river, and refers back to a 1968 conveyance from Rufus S. Brown to Joseph A. Marcus. [2]

The language is plain: land lots, acreage, boundaries, the river. Read it with the place in front of you, though, and the river becomes more than a line in a legal description. You can see why a crossing mattered.

A working landscape, and a clearing we cannot yet explain

The 1972 photograph holds another question. Just south of the crossing, the ground is open and disturbed. Light patches and elongated shapes catch the eye. It is tempting to give them a name—a timber yard, a work area, a business—but the photograph does not resolve enough detail to tell us which, if any, is right.

A quarry rumor gave us another direction to look. On the 1966 USGS Tallapoosa North map, we found a place explicitly labeled “Quarry,” southwest of the bridge near Spearman Lake. Matching the surrounding bends and roads places that mapped quarry away from the bridge clearing. The rumor has a nearby geographical lead; it has not become an explanation for our ground. [7]

The old highway map also carries the name “Abernathys Mill” east of the crossing. In Georgia’s 1955 manufacturing directory, Abernathy Brothers of Buchanan appears as a sawmill and cotton gin. The 1960–61 directory lists Abernathy Bros. on Route 1 and reports an establishment date of 1882. Those records give us a business to investigate, although we have not yet proved that the directory entry and mapped mill refer to the same site. [8] [9]

For now, these are neighboring pieces of the landscape. We have not found a record placing that mill—or a quarry operation—on the clearing beside our bridge. But the names help us ask better questions of people who knew this stretch of river.

A mill name leads to people

Older newspapers give the Abernathy name a place in everyday county business. A tax notice published in the Haralson Banner on October 18, 1889 scheduled collector Joe W. Kelley at Abernathy’s mill that afternoon. The announced stop shows a mill serving as a recognizable meeting place, although it does not prove the collector made that particular visit. [10]

A decade later, the name comes with a father and son. On April 28, 1899, Buchanan’s Tribune reported that George Abernathy had come from Cherokee County, Alabama, and was working with his son G. W. Abernathy to erect a corn and wheat mill on the Tallapoosa a few miles north of Buchanan. A 1909–10 business directory then lists G. W. Abernathy under Buchanan with a gin and mill. [11] [12]

These records turn a map label into named people and specific work. They also leave a useful question: were the 1889 stop, the 1899 construction, the later directory business and the mill on the 1985 map all at the same place? We need deeds or a dated mill plan to connect them. None yet identifies the clearing beside our bridge.

What a flood could take

An older newspaper shows how much of that working life depended on the river behaving itself. The Haralson Banner of April 19, 1884 reported heavy damage to an Abernathy mill, gin and sawmill, including lost lumber, cotton seed, shop tools and sawlogs. A later note on the same page says the sawmill was nearly covered by water but had not washed down. A building could survive while the work inside and around it suffered. The report gives no first name or parcel that securely connects this operation to the later mill records. [14]

Six years later, the county’s published grand-jury presentments put the cost of keeping a crossing in service into unusually concrete terms. They recommended paying George Abernathy $125 to roof and weatherboard a Tallapoosa bridge on the Buchanan–Cedartown road, following plans filed with the Ordinary. He was to give an approved bond promising to carry out the work and rebuild the bridge if it washed away or was otherwise destroyed. This was a conditional recommendation, not a receipt for completed work. [15]

That 1890 bridge has not been linked to our steel crossing. But the records sharpen the search: there were particular businesses to protect, crossings to maintain and agreements about who would rebuild when the river took them.

The valley people studied for a lake

There was also a time when planners were considering a very different future for this valley.

In 1990, archaeologists surveyed approximately 4,000 acres for a proposed West Georgia reservoir. Across that study area, they recorded 242 archaeological sites and 22 historic structures. Those findings belong to the wider surveyed landscape; they do not establish what was on our particular campsite. [3]

Still, the survey adds something worth thinking about while you sit beside the water. This valley held enough traces of earlier lives to occupy a substantial research effort. And people were studying what a reservoir might change.

The reservoir proposal is part of the history around this stretch of river. So is the road. So are the families who knew the crossing when it was useful. We tell more of the wider reservoir story in The Lake Haralson County Never Got.

The part we are still looking for

What we haven’t found is a reliable account of how that use ended.

There was significant flooding in the Tallapoosa basin in March 1990, but that regional event does not establish what happened to this bridge. The remembered closure window is earlier, and neither aerial settles the date or cause. County road and bridge records may distinguish when traffic stopped from when any later damage or removal occurred. [4]

Until those turn up, that part of the story stays open.

A place to spend some time

For our family, learning the history has changed the way we see the campsite. The old roadbed deserves a second look. A name on a map becomes somebody worth learning about. A remembered bicycle ride makes the steel crossing feel a little less distant.

We hope guests find some of that same curiosity here.

You don’t need to know every former owner or every road number to enjoy an evening beside the Tallapoosa. But hearing someone remember a school bus coming this way, or pedaling across the bridge, gives you something to picture as the light fades over the river.

Our river stays have two different settings: Your Tallapoosa River Hideaway, with developed facilities and day-use or overnight options, and The Tallapoosa Hideaway Wilderness Retreat, our primitive 18-acre south-side retreat. They have separate Hipcamp listings, access arrangements, and availability. Meet the two river retreats and find their Hipcamp listings.

The Wilderness Retreat is closed to camping and leisure visits through January 10, 2027; later dates depend on its booking calendar. The old bridge is closed and is not an arrival route or a crossing for guests. Use only the directions provided for your booked site.

And perhaps someone reading this can help fill in the next page.

If you remember the crossing near Bethlehem Church Road and Kelley Loop, or have an old photograph showing the bridge or road in use, we would love to hear from you. Even an approximate year, tied to a school grade or a family event, could help. Share a memory, photograph, or source. We review contributions before publishing them.

For now, the river still runs past the old crossing.

And we’re glad to have a place beside it.