Pic(k) of the Week: Ringling Bridge at sunrise

Click on the image for a larger, hi-res version (on Flickr).

The ~0.6-mile-long John Ringling Causeway spans Sarasota Bay between the City of Sarasota (to the east) and Bird Key (to the west). The bay lies between barrier islands on the the Gulf of MEXICO and the western Florida coast.

Sarasota, Florida, USA.
6 October 2019 (8:05 am EDT)

And, yes, it's that Ringling! In 1927, John Ringling moved the headquarters of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to Sarasota.

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Roy Haynes: Equipoise (composer: Stanley Cowell)

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Pic(k) of the Week: Washington W. King Covered Bridge

A historic covered bridge (open to light vehicular and pedestrian traffic) crosses a narrow channel of Stone Mountain Lake.

Stone Mountain Park: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 15 November 2023.

The Washington W. King / College Avenue Covered Bridge was designed, engineered, and constructed, in 1891 (at a cost of approximately $2,470), by Washington W. King, the son of a freed slave. It is one of only four remaining structures of the many created and constructed by King. Several members of his extended family were prominent African-American businessmen for decades in multiple Georgia cities.

The covered bridge —using a 'Town Lattice' design that allowed the wooden bridge to flex, expand and contract with the seasons— was built by King in Athens, Georgia, to connect the downtown area with outlying farm lands across the Oconee River.

The bridge served Athens until two severe floods, in 1910 and again in 1963, severely damaged the bridge. Soon thereafter, the covered bridge was replaced with a new concrete and steel crossing, and the original bridge was set aside on the banks of the Oconee River.

In 1965, the Clarke County Commission donated the bridge to the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA). The bridge was partially disassembled and transported sixty miles to Stone Mountain Park, where it was re-assembled and re-installed atop new cement and granite piers. It now connects the park to Indian Island, a picturesque 17-acre island on Stone Mountain Lake.

— Stone Mountain Park.
— Decaturish.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Bridge over Hardee Creek

It's only a small pedestrian bridge over Hardee Creek in the Kirkwood Urban Forest Preserve, in Atlanta, Georgia, but walking over it, the (intrepid) explorer could (almost) forget she is within the city limits.

Perspective. It's how you look at it (excluding the quantum level, of course).

1 November 2018.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Stone bridge 'keyhole'

Photo of a 'keyhole' —in a short-span stone bridge built over a usually-dry storm-runoff culvert— in Grant Park, Atlanta, Georgia, taken on 29 August 2018.

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Grant Park

Grant Park —Atlanta, Georgia's first city-owned public park— was named, not for nemesis Ulysses S. Grant, but Lemuel P. Grant (no relation), an Atlanta businessman who donated over 100 acres of his personal property to Atlanta in 1883. Grant was a railroad engineer who designed the fortifications for Atlanta during the Civil War.

In 1903, the Olmsted Brothers (sons of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who planned New York City's Central Park) were hired to design the park. It included Lake Abana, large enough for boating, since paved over as a parking lot for Zoo Atlanta within the park.

The surrounding, eponymous neighborhood had also comprised Grant's estate. His three-story mansion, now headquarters for the Atlanta Preservation Center, is one of only four extant antebellum houses in Atlanta.

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