Some roads don’t fade quietly.
Some stop mid-sentence.
Stretching nearly a thousand feet across the dark, tannin-stained waters of the Suwannee River, the Hillman Bridge stands rusting and silent—an abandoned steel giant that once promised connection and now leads only into forest.
We didn’t set out to find it first.
On our way to scout the ghost town of Ellaville, Dusty and I came across the bridge unexpectedly—one of those roadside moments where curiosity taps you on the shoulder and says, You’re going to want to pull over.
So we did.
What followed was a quiet walk through history, a reminder of Florida’s industrial ambitions, and—though we didn’t know it at the time—a final look at the bridge before storms would change it forever.
A Bridge That Leads to Nothing—Now
At first glance, the Hillman Bridge feels like a contradiction.
It’s massive. Purposeful. Overbuilt for a place that no longer exists.
Cracked asphalt runs its length, weeds pushing through like punctuation marks added long after the sentence was written. There are no tire tracks anymore, just graffiti, rust, and the sound of wind moving across steel trusses.
But this bridge wasn’t built to be abandoned.
In 1926, it was meant to carry the future.
Ellaville: The Town Beneath the Trees
The bridge dead-ends into what was once Ellaville Ghost Town, a town that had already lived several lives by the time the bridge opened.
Ellaville was founded around 1861 by George Franklin Drew, a businessman who would later become Florida’s governor. Situated along the Suwannee River, the town grew around a massive steam-powered sawmill that processed the seemingly endless pine forests of North Florida.
At its height in the late 1800s, Ellaville was a true boomtown. It had a railroad connection, steamboat traffic, churches, schools, and hundreds of residents working in timber and related industries.
But boomtowns burn fast.
A major fire destroyed the mill in 1898. Though rebuilt, the surrounding forests were already thinning. Floods battered the area repeatedly. By the early 1900s, the mill shut down for good. The Great Depression and World War I finished what nature and industry began.
When Ellaville’s post office closed in 1942, the town officially crossed into ghost town status. Even Drew’s once-grand mansion eventually fell into ruin and burned in the 1970s.
By the time the Hillman Bridge opened, Ellaville was already fading into memory. This bridge exists because Ellaville once did. The ghost town at the end of the Hillman Bridge tells the story of boom, collapse, and what happens when industry leaves faster than people expect.
So why build such a bridge here?
The Turpentine King
The answer lies with Captain Winder Josephus Hillman, the man whose name the bridge still bears.
Hillman made his fortune not from lumber, but from pine resin—turpentine. After moving to Live Oak, Florida, he entered the booming naval stores industry, supplying turpentine and rosin to a rapidly industrializing nation.
His rise, however, was entangled with Florida’s post-Reconstruction convict lease system, which allowed private companies to use forced prison labor—conditions that were often brutal and inescapable. Hillman began as a guard in one of these turpentine camps and quickly rose through the ranks, eventually overseeing hundreds of incarcerated laborers. It was here he earned the title “Captain.”
By the early 1900s, Hillman had built a vast turpentine empire and became a director of the Consolidated Naval Stores Company, one of the largest operations of its kind. He was widely regarded as Suwannee County’s first millionaire and earned the nickname “The Turpentine King.”
From Industry to Infrastructure
Around 1902, Hillman retired from turpentine and reinvented himself as a civic leader. He invested in farms, helped establish a bank, and built the Suwannee Hotel in Live Oak.
He also turned his attention to roads.
As automobiles became more common, Florida’s infrastructure struggled to keep up. When his friend Cary Hardee became governor, Hillman was appointed chairman of the Florida State Road Department, where he became one of the state’s strongest advocates for paved highways.
Hillman even funded road construction himself. One private road to his farm later became part of U.S. Highway 129 and is still known locally as Hillman Highway.
By the mid-1920s, U.S. Highway 90 was a critical east–west route across North Florida—but at Ellaville, it stopped at the Suwannee River. A modern bridge was needed.
In 1925, construction began.
A Bridge Built for the Future
Completed in 1926 by the R.H.H. Blackwell Company of New York, the Hillman Bridge stretched 916 feet across the river, made up of three steel truss spans. At the time, it was a modern marvel—finally linking Madison and Suwannee counties and smoothing the path for automobile travel across the region.
There was debate over the name. Some wanted it called the “Suwannee River Bridge,” believing the famous name would attract tourism.
Local politics won.
This was Hillman’s county. This was Hillman’s bridge.
For six decades, it carried traffic faithfully along U.S. Highway 90, even as the town beside it continued to disappear.
Another Florida bridge shaped by ambition, tragedy, and time. Bellamy Bridge carries a very different legacy—one rooted in legend and loss—but like Hillman Bridge, it stands as a reminder that crossings often outlive the reasons they were built.
When Progress Moved On
By the 1980s, the Hillman Bridge had become obsolete. Narrow lanes and steel trusses no longer met modern traffic demands. Local accounts suggest damage from an oversized truck strike helped seal its fate.
In 1986, a wider concrete bridge opened beside it, and the Hillman Bridge was officially closed to traffic.
Walking it today feels surreal.
Modern vehicles rush past just yards away, while the old bridge remains still. The metal railings are cool beneath your hands. Weeds break through pavement. Below, the Suwannee flows dark and quiet, indifferent to timelines and ambition alike.
Before the Storms
At the time of our visit, we didn’t know how brief this version of the bridge would be.
Not long after, Hurricane Helene swept through the area, followed by Hurricane Milton. When we returned later, fallen trees and storm damage had changed the bridge and the landscape around it.
This walk—this quiet crossing—captured the Hillman Bridge before the storms.
A moment that no longer exists.
A Bridge Back in Time
The Hillman Bridge is often called a “bridge to nowhere,” but that isn’t quite right.
It was a bridge to ambition.
To industry.
To a future that simply chose a different route.
Today, it stands as a reminder that progress doesn’t erase the past—it just builds around it. And sometimes, what’s left behind tells the most honest stories of all.
Just upriver from Hillman Bridge sits another abandoned crossing—often confused with this one. We didn’t visit it on this trip, but we did on a later journey. That story deserves its own chapter, and we’ll link it here when it’s ready.
Reflections from the Road
Some places don’t disappear.
They wait—until someone stops, listens, and walks the length of what remains.
If you love forgotten roads, ghost towns, and the quiet stories left behind, join us at Travel Made Personal.
👉 Follow along for more journeys into the past.
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