Ruff's Mill and Concord Covered Bridge

Along Nickajack Creek in Smyrna, Georgia, a miller's house, a gristmill and a covered bridge form a small rural mill complex. The house dates from about 1850 and follows the Plantation Plain form, later given Victorian touches. The fieldstone mill is an unusual example of antebellum stone construction, since most Georgia mills were wooden. The 1872 Concord Covered Bridge, built by Martin L. Ruff and Robert Daniell, is 133 feet long with Queenpost trusses of heart-pine and iron rods. It is one of 17 covered bridges left in Georgia and one of only two with this truss type. The mill survived the Battle of Ruff's Mill on July 4, 1864, part of the Atlanta Campaign. In the 1930s landscape architect William C. Pauley laid out formal gardens and terraces behind the house for Dr. Clinton Reed. Together the buildings, waterworks remains and bridge convey how such complexes once looked and worked.