In 1977 the City of Atlanta dismantled a steel overhead bridge on Marietta Road at Milepost 148.8H, which spanned the Inman Transfer Yards of the Southern Railway System. Weakened by fire in 1954, the Marietta Road Bridge had not carried a full load of traffic for more than twenty years and was scheduled by the Office of Engineering to be replaced by a concrete overpass under the Public Works Capital Development and Investment Program of the Economic Development Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The original steel structure, moved to Atlanta from South Carolina in 1905, was Georgia's only remaining example of a Whipple Truss bridge--a design for long-span bridge construction in common use in the United States between 1865 and 1885. The State Historic Preservation Officer of the State of Georgia advised the City of Atlanta that the bridge might be eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places and requested that a full study of the structure be made to determine its historical and engineering significance as mitigation against the loss of the bridge to the City of Atlanta and the State of Georgia. In compliance, this report was prepared at the direction of the City of Atlanta, according to specifications of the Department of Natural Resources, Historic Preservation Section, February 1977.
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