The community pulled together to help five Chance Road families get a bridge constructed after flood waters washed it out in the recent flooding at South Pittsburg.SOUTH PITTSBURG, Tenn. – At 11 p.m. CDT on July 10, a local landmark Chance Road residents have looked at all their lives was gone. “The bridge” is the only name it has ever been given, and it is five families’ only means to cross a little brook that comes down from the Cumberland Plateau into Richard City, Tenn.
On the night of a devastating flash flood, that bridge was demolished by fast water and tree limbs.
“[Debris] all got caught on the backside of the bridge, and water started backing up until it finally broke loose,” Kenneth Frame said last week.
He is the grandson of a West Virginia carpenter who settled in Richard City around the turn of the 20th century — the same carpenter who poured the concrete foundations of the old bridge.
Chance Road falls under South Pittsburg’s responsibility since it was annexed in 2009, but after the flooding of two weeks ago, city workers were covered up trying to salvage the town’s historic downtown. That left the five stranded Richard City families out of luck, with just a single plank thrown across the stream as a means in and out on foot.