Emerts Cove Covered Bridge
Sevier County, Pittman Center near Gatlinburg. Built 2000, 84 ft. long. A log cabin-style bridge over the Middle Prong of the Little Pigeon River, named for the area's first settler.
Emerts Cove Covered Bridge crosses the Middle Prong of the Little Pigeon River in the Pittman Center community just outside Gatlinburg, in a setting close enough to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to offer views of the surrounding peaks through its side windows. The bridge takes its name from Frederick Emert, a Revolutionary War veteran who settled the area with his family in 1790 as its first residents; the Emerts are buried about half a mile away in the Emert's Cove Cemetery, and the Middle Prong itself carries a designation as an "outstanding national resource water," awarded by the State of Tennessee in March 1998.
Despite its historic-looking log cabin styling, the bridge itself is a 21st-century structure: Pittman Center Mayor Judy Perryman and the town's Board of Aldermen secured state and federal funding in 1997 to build it, and the 84-foot span was completed in the spring of 2000 by builders Steve McCarter and Garry Shultz. Rather than a working transportation crossing recovered from the 19th century, Emerts Cove is a deliberate, community-built tribute to the pioneer family whose name the surrounding cove still carries — a modern bridge built to honor a much older story.
