Photograph of Watson Mill Bridge State Park — Photograph by Diliff, CC BY 2.5. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Watson Mill Covered Bridge and Mill Historic District

Built in 1991. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

From the record

“Watson Mill Bridge State Park is a 1,018-acre (4.12 km2) Georgia state park located near Comer and Carlton on the South Fork of the Broad River. The park is named for the Watson Mill Bridge the longest original-site covered bridge in Georgia, which spans 229 feet (70 m) across the South Fork of the Broad River.”
Wikipedia article Watson Mill Bridge State Park, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 12 National Register listings published here for Oglethorpe County · listed in 1991 · category: District · built in 1991.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Along S. Fork Broad R., Watson Mill State Park, Comer, 30627
When was it listed? September 1991
Category. district
Census division. Crawford
When was it built? 1991
National Register reference number. 91001147 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

222 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 222 fires within 5 miles of Watson Mill Covered Bridge and Mill Historic District between 1992 and 2019, burning about 530 acres in total. 14 started naturally. 39 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	100
Arson/incendiarism	39
Railroad operations and maintenance	15
Natural	14
Smoking	14
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	13
Equipment and vehicle use	10
Recreation and ceremony	9
Misuse of fire by a minor	8

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
4 September 2008	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Georgia Forestry Commission	not named
3 September 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Georgia Forestry Commission	FY2019OGLETHORPE003
28 September 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Georgia Forestry Commission	not named
27 September 2016	Debris and open burning	10 acres	Georgia Forestry Commission	FY2017-OGLETHORPE-004
22 September 2004	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Georgia Forestry Commission	not named
22 September 2004	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Georgia Forestry Commission	not named
20 September 1997	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Georgia Forestry Commission	not named
19 September 2003	Smoking	under an acre	Georgia Forestry Commission	not named

Every fire recorded in Oglethorpe County

Mines and quarries near this property

5 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 5 workings within 5 miles of Watson Mill Covered Bridge and Mill Historic District: 4 producers, 1 past producer. 4 still produce. What was taken out: Granite. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Galaxy Blue Quarry	Granite	Producer
Grimes Brothers Quarry No. 2	Granite	Past Producer
Kantala Quarry	Granite	Producer
New Blue Quarry	Granite	Producer
Service Quarry	Granite	Producer

Every working recorded in Oglethorpe County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

2 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Howard's Covered Bridge	4.4 miles	1975
	J. L. Bridges Home Place	6.9 miles	1978

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 91001147 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Oglethorpe County	All 12 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.