The Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad Bridge over Running Water Creek was a vital link between Nashville and Chattanooga, but the retreating Confederate Army destroyed it in the summer of 1863 as the pursuing Federal Army expected to use it. On Sunday, August 30, Private William Miller of the 75th Indiana Infantry wrote that his brigade was ferried across on flats, marched all night near the railroad toward Chattanooga, and reached Whiteside or Running Water at daylight to find that the Confederates had burned the bridges. He recalled that the covered, iron-roofed bridge spanned the valley from one mountain to the other, stood about one hundred and fifty feet high at its highest place, had cost a mint of money, and would take months to rebuild, meaning that if Chattanooga were taken, supplies would have to cross the mountains by wagon. The Federal Army rebuilt the bridge, and Chesley A. Mosman of the 59th Illinois Infantry wrote that his company was ordered to guard carpenters rebuilding the structure under a Chicago contractor named Boomer, who was required to finish it within 40 days. Soldiers reused sheet iron from the wrecked bridge as roofing for their huts, and Mosman wrote that the pounding made it sound like a boiler yard. On November 9, he recalled that Colonel Grose had the men build a platform for trains, that trains came up the west side of the creek with knapsacks of some of the brigade, and that they also built a small bridge on the wagon road. Mosman and the 59th Illinois spent most of the winter at Whiteside. Completed at a cost of $95,000.00, the bridge was five hundred feet long and ninety-five feet high, with a wooden trestle extending the total length to 780 feet, and it was regarded as one of the war's greatest feats of military engineering.

Photo: Lee Hattabaugh

Photo: Lee Hattabaugh

Photo: Lee Hattabaugh

Photo: Lee Hattabaugh

Photo: Lee Hattabaugh

Photo: Lee Hattabaugh