Knox Co. Bridge over Tennessee River, Knoxville, TN, 1906

About this postcard

A long steel bridge on heavy stone piers crosses the Tennessee River at Knoxville, with a sternwheel steamboat and a smaller launch passing beneath it. Behind the bridge, the city rises from the bluff, its buildings and church spires grouped around a large domed courthouse-like structure. The bridge linked downtown with the south bank in the early 1900s, when Knoxville was a rail and manufacturing center and the Tennessee River still carried working steamboat traffic. Its steel spans and stone piers were typical of river crossings built to handle growing city traffic, and the scene shows the bridge as both a civic landmark and a working river crossing.