The Gay Street Bridge

The current closure is another chapter of catastrophes and construction projects across the Tennessee River

Despite several periods when the Gay Street Bridge has been closed for repairs, mostly recently during a major renovation from 2001 to 2004, the structure has been remarkably dependable. Let’s hope that after a short closure, and yet another renovation, the bridge shall remain that way for years to come. More and more residents, and visitors to South Knoxville businesses and parks, are counting on it.

Looking south across the Gay Street Bridge, 2023 by Shawn Poynter.

The Gay Street Bridge is currently closed following a recent Tennessee Department of Transportation safety report. While it might remain closed for an extended time, now may be a good opportunity to reflect on the long history of the Gay Street Bridge, its predecessors, and how Knoxvillians crossed the river when there were no bridges there at all.

When Knoxville was established in 1791, there was no river bridge for the pioneer settlers to cross and there wouldn’t be one for 76 more years. Unless you owned a boat, the only option to cross the river would have been to pay a ferryman to take you across. The first official ferryman to obtain a permit from the city court was Alexander Cunningham around 1793. Soon James White, the first settler in the area, and one of the town’s founding fathers, would operate a ferry from the mouth of First Creek. But it wouldn’t be until the second half of the Civil War when a bridge was actually built.

Looking north across the Tennessee River, circa 1865, with the Union Army bridge on the far right. (Library of Congress.)

After the Union Army took over the city from Confederate forces in 1863 during the Civil War, a Confederate-built pontoon bridge was moved from Loudon to Knoxville to strengthen communications and supplies across the river. By early 1864, the pontoon bridge had deteriorated, and a stronger bridge, built by Union engineers and soldiers, was positioned next to it. Taken from the southern shore of the Tennessee River, a 1865 photograph shows the newer bridge on the extreme right. The bridge did not connect to Gay Street but was positioned a little to the east near the mouth of First Creek and appears to align with State Street.

Flooding along the river near Knoxville during the Great Freshet of 1867. (McClung Historical Collection.)

In early March of 1867, the city was inundated by heavy rain for several days, which dramatically swelled the banks of the Tennessee River as well as nearby creeks. On the north side of town, the water level of swampy Flag Pond by the railroad station rose to meet the still rising waters of First and Second Creek made an island of downtown. The town of Knoxville had been established decades earlier on the bluff above the river by our founding fathers who felt that this elevated plateau (where the City County Building is today) would provide protection against flooding. They were proved correct. During the relentless deluge, the Union Army bridge was washed away, along with numerous houses and factories like the Gas Works all along the riverfront. It would be six more years before a replacement bridge would be built.

Not much is known about the second river bridge, which is hardly surprising since it opened in the fall of 1873 and remained for only 18 months before another brutal storm washed it away in 1875. One newspaper reporter suggested that this flood might have caused the river to rise even higher than it had in 1867. Locals accumulated along the banks and on the bridge to watch all kinds of flotsam and jetsam float down the river, including buildings and even a haystack with a cow munching calmly on it. The biblical-like storm brought so much turbulence that it rapidly tore the Gay Street Bridge away in sections from pier to pier.

A new bridge opened in 1881 and remained a stable structure, if not exactly popular to regular folk. The narrow bridge, this time operating as a toll bridge enabling costs to be recouped, provided no dedicated walkway, offering little protection for pedestrians competing for space with horse-drawn carts and carriages as well as unruly livestock being driven across the river.

The third bridge, often known as the County Bridge, that stood from 1881 to 1898. (McClung Historical Collection.)

Although the 1881 bridge still passed safety inspections, construction bids were solicited by the City in 1896 from bridge-building firms for a replacement structure. The Youngstown Co. Ohio-based Youngstown Bridge Co. won the contract to build a new bridge that would accommodate the increasing numbers of users and also new uses, including an expected streetcar line to connect downtown across the river. City planners were prescient in choosing Youngstown Co.’s durable steel design that would last far longer than all of its previous incarnations put together. The streetcar route across the river, extending eastward along Sevier Avenue, would later serve the new fashionable suburban development of Island Home Park that began to take off after the first lots were sold in 1912. South Knoxville would be annexed by the city in 1917 leading to greater population growth. In later years, other bridges would offer alternative ways to cross the river – namely the Henley Bridge, which was completed in 1931 and the South Knoxville Bridge completed in 1983.

By Paul James and Jack Neely

This article appeared in West Knoxville Lifestyle magazine, October 2024.