With 1,846 man-hours of work from 50 volunteers and three staff members, the Cumberland Trail Conference last week completed the first of three pedestrian bridges on a Hamilton County segment of the 300-mile trail.

“We’re getting ready to start the next one (Tuesday),” said Tony Hook, general manager of the trail conference, a Crossville, Tenn.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining the trail that is the center of the Tennessee Cumberland Trail State Park.

The 60-foot bridge over Big Possum Creek near Soddy-Daisy is the shortest of the three Mr. Hook hopes volunteers will complete this fall. It connects two local segments of the 168 miles of trail that are built to date.

Jan Agee, one of the volunteers, said she is thankful she was able to be part of the effort.

“It’s an awesome feeling to know you’ve helped build it,” she said. “I’m going hiking on it this weekend to cross it — now that it’s completed — for the first time. I feel very blessed that I’ve got such beauty in my backyard to go enjoy.”

Mr. Hook said the next bridge will span Rock Creek and be 80 feet long. It is in a much more remote section of forest, and the building equipment and materials must be carried into the gorge and lowered to the creek sides with ropes, he said.

Many volunteers for the Rock Creek bridge will be students from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, he said.

The third bridge on the work list is a 70-foot span over Little Possum Creek, Mr. Hook said. If volunteers cannot complete it this fall, he said, it will become part of spring trail work scheduled here in March.

The pre-designed bridge packages are made to be bolted into place by volunteers once the footings and preparation work are complete. The bridge packages were paid for with a federal Recreational Trails Program grant of $120,000, administered by the state.

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