Walnut Street Bridge (Tennessee)

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Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The Walnut Street Bridge is a truss bridge that spans the Tennessee River in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Built in 1890, it was the first to connect Chattanooga's downtown with the North Shore. The bridge was closed to motor vehicles in 1978, and sat in disuse and disrepair for nearly a decade. Repairs and structural modifications have been made to turn the bridge into what is now a pedestrian walkway. The 2,376 foot (720 m) span is one of the longest pedestrian bridges in the world and sits near the heart of a massive, recently completed urban renewal project. The bridge is well-loved by local residents and very popular among tourists.

The commonly-known "county bridge" connected the predominantly White city on the south side of the Tennessee River with the large Black work force on the north side ("North Shore") in Hill City, a town that was subsumed into Chattanooga in 1912.

Two African-American men were lynched on the bridge: Alfred Blount on February 14, 1893, was hanged from the first span for allegedly attacking a white woman; and Ed Johnson on March 19, 1906, was hanged from the second span for also allegedly attacking a white woman. Johnson's lynching initiated a court case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.