Joseph Julian Henry (Airport Highway) Bridge, Sullivan County, TN

Airline passengers from Kingsport, Johnson City and points west that flew out of the Tri-Cities Airport at some point probably rode over this familiar green bridge on State Highway 75 (Airport Highway) near the Spurgeon community in northern Washington County. The bridge just inside the Sullivan County line was the first crossing of the South Fork Holston River in that area, and was built specifically to handle increased traffic to the airport.

More is probably known about the man that the former Airport Highway Bridge is named after, than the bridge itself.

According to Tennessee House Joint Resolution 162 filed on March 29, 2001, Joseph Julian Henry of Sullivan County served a year in the U.S. Army Infantry during World War I back in 1918, receiving an honorable discharge. 18 years after his return home, he disassembled a home he'd bought near the present-day Tri-Cities Airport in 1937, and moved it piece by piece to land that he owned near the site of a new huge, steel truss bridge being built over the South Fork Holston River. Back then, the river was free-flowing because none of the TVA dams in the area had been built yet. The two-lane bridge was completed and opened the next year in 1938.

Henry passed away in 1979. In 2001, the state of Tennessee honored both his memory and his military service by naming the bridge at his home, the "Joseph Julian Henry Memorial Bridge" to honor this Army infantry combat soldier.

The bridge was three riveted Parker through trusses (K-truss hybrids) and painted green---common with many Tennessee river bridges of the 1930's through the 50's. It also had two sub-divided, riveted Warren through trusses with raised polygonal top chords on either end of the Parkers. Built by the former Tennessee Highway Department, the bridge was 877 feet long, with the main channel span 180.1 feet long with a vertical clearance of 15 feet from deck to beams. During its heyday, the bridge carried between 7,000 and 8,000 cars and trucks per day across the river.

The bridge was deemed obsolete and each of the three channel spans was dynamited into the water during controlled demolitions in April of 2011. A new concrete stringer bridge was built right beside it and was also named the "Orville Depew 'Dick' Kitzmiller and Riley Lee Milhorn" Memorial Bridge. 

According to Tennessee Senate legislative bill 814 dated May 19, 2011, PFC Kitzmiller, United States Marine Corps, who was also raised on and farmed land near the Airport Highway Bridge, made the ultimate sacrifice defending our country on the island of Guam in 1944 during World War II. 

Milhorn's family owned ancestral land on the South Holston River south of the Airport Highway Bridge dating back to 1789, with Riley Milhorn farming that land, then moving downriver to property at the present bridge while working for the WPA and later the Holston Army Ammunition Plant during World War II.