Bridgeport, Alabama

Half day beginner’s Paddle SUGGESTED ITINERARY

Start: Blue Bridge in South Pittsburg, TN (around mile 418.5)

End: River Park and Boat Ramp in Bridgeport, AL

Length: 6.2 miles 

Experience: Start your journey in South Pittsburgh, TN, just over the state line. Fuel up at Big Bad Breakfast at the Lodge Cast Iron Foundry and Museum (open 7am-2:30pm) and take a tour of the museum before heading over to South Pittsburg Municipal Park near the iconic blue bridge. Your paddle will take you 6.2 miles to Bridgeport, AL. Along the way, you’ll pass the historic Battery Hill, the site of Civil War steamboat landings and construction sites, as well as the railroad and walking bridge in Bridgeport. You’ll end your journey at the River Park and Boat Ramp in Bridgeport, AL, where there are covered pavilions, restrooms, and overnight camping. After your paddle, make the short drive out to Russell Cave National Monument, an archeological site with one of the most complete records of prehistoric cultures in the Southeast, to see artifacts representing over 10,000 years of use in a single place. 

Restaurants: Big Bad Breakfast, Stevarino’s Italian Eatery and Pub (S. Pittsburg, TN)

Things to Do: Take the historic walking trail around Battery Hill and down to the walking bridge for a one-mile round trip hike across the Tennessee River. 

Fun Facts:

  • Bridgeport was originally known as Jonesville, named after the area’s largest landowner, Charles Smithson Jones

  • Bridgeport was the location of a Union field hospital and cemetery during the US Civil War

  • Battery Hill was the location of a Union Army fort; a Battery Hill hike provides beautiful hilltop views of the river and you can see several historic Victorian homes from the 1890s 

  • The Bridgeport Walking Bridge is converted from a former L&N Railroad deck bridge originally constructed in 1851

Land Declaration: This Tennessee RiverLine experiences traverses territory once home to Eastern Cherokee, Shawnee, and Yuchi peoples (source: https://native-land.ca/)

Ecoregion: SOUTHWESTERN APPALACHIANS. Stretching from Kentucky to Alabama, these open low mountains contain a mosaic of forest and woodland with some cropland and pasture. The eastern boundary of the ecoregion, along the more abrupt escarpment where it meets the Ridge and Valley (67), is relatively smooth and only slightly notched by small, eastward flowing streams. Much of the western boundary, next to the Interior Plateau (71), is more crenulated, with a rougher escarpment that is more deeply incised. The mixed mesophytic forest is restricted mostly to the deeper ravines and escarpment slopes, and the upland forests are dominated by mixed oaks with shortleaf pine. (source: USEPA)

Physiographic Region: Stretching from New York to Alabama, the Appalachian Plateau show evidence of deformation by plate collision. The birth of the mountain ranges in this region, some 480 million years ago, marks the first of several mountain building plate collisions that culminated in the construction of the supercontinent Pangaea with the Appalachians near the center. (source: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/physiographic-provinces.htm)