Just as multilane highways today are replacing narrow two-laners, and just as rutted dirt roads were replaced by paved roads, bridges over wide streams were replacing ferries in the early 1900s. J.M. Nunn of Gainesville built two bridges over the Broad River in Elbert County, but hardly before they were completed, he lost them. The first one broke up in its midsection just before the county accepted it, and the other one burned.