If you drive too quick down Antioch Road east of Lula, you might think it is just a little barn.

But it is the smallest covered bridge in the state - and one of the smallest in the country — sitting on private land just off this twisty road of chicken farms and modest homes. Back in the day, the bridge saw all sorts of traffic — school buses, farm animals and families — all making their way on what was the main road between Lula and Gillsville.

Officially called the Hyder Bridge for the family who built it in 1915, the bridge is also called the Lula Covered Bridge and the Blind Susie Bridge.

And it is Susie who is said to haunt this bridge today.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the bridge's 34 feet span a tributary to Oak Grove Creek. According to the Georgia Department of Transportation, the bridge was in service until 1969, when the road was paved and a new concrete bridge was built on the road motorists travel today. In 1975, the bridge was taken apart and completely rebuilt on the banks before being lifted by a crane and placed back on its original foundations.

It has been rebuilt a few times in its history, said many longtime Lula residents. One resident recalled the cedar shakes on the outside of the building as he drove through it in a school bus. Students at Banks County High School restored the bridge just a few years ago, going by the oldest picture they could find of the bridge.

This most recent renovation project, which included a few picnic tables next to the bridge, won the Future Business Leaders of America chapter at Banks County High School second in the country among more than 2,500 other FBLA chapters.

"It was a project that was taken on, not without controversy, by the FBLA students as a community service project," said Rick Billingslea, a former member of the Banks County Chamber of Commerce who today is pastor at Hebron Presbyterian Church in Homer. Billingslea was one of a handful of adults who helped the high school students with the renovation project.

"It fit the components of historical renovation, a civic project that would benefit the community," he said. "The kids, with a couple of adults supervising, but mostly the kids, stripped the bridge down and got old pictures of it and restored it back to what it looked like originally."

Billingslea said today, that bridge is the last reminder of the bridges of Banks County.

"At one time Banks County had 13 covered bridges, but there was a flood in the mid '80s that took all but that one bridge out," he said. "Now that's the last remaining bridge."

Homer Mayor Doug Cheek, who is also president of the Banks County Historical Society, said the project was an important one, despite the opposition group members faced.

"It's a historic bridge. There's just a handful of covered bridges left in the state," he said. "We didn't want to lose that. It's got some pretty neat history to it."

But because the bridge now sits on private land - and the only access from Antioch Road is down a steep incline - there's much more to the bridge's renovation than just new boards and a plaque.

"It crosses two property lines and has no access (from the road)," Billingslea said. "Both property owners have agreed to donate a piece of the property, but it has to be in the name of somebody. ... We also wanted to put in an access road with parking."

Billingslea said he was speaking with the DOT and a grading contractor about putting in a culvert and a small parking lot, but then there are issues with maintenance by the county and someone to close the gate to the parking lot each night. And after the renovation was complete, the project began to lose traction.

"You had local people that would not support it, because it was on private property. ... They wanted the kids to get the title for the property before they started the renovation," he said. "Basically, it was such a monumental effort, and most of the kids involved with it graduated. It was supposed to be handed over to the historical society, and since then I don't know what's happened."

Cheek said since that time members of the county commission have changed and support seems to have dried up.

"During that time we've changed commissioners and nobody wanted to get behind it, and the historical society, well, we don't have the people who can do that," Cheek said. "We've got to get the county behind us before it gets overgrown again. They've got it fixed up real nice - you just can't get down there to it.

"It's just like, ‘What do we do next?' It's gotten real frustrating with everyone concerned. What held up a lot of this thing is the title to the thing."

And then there's Blind Susie, adding her ghost to the mysteries of Hyder Bridge.

Legend has it that Blind Susie would sit on her front porch all day, rocking in her rocking chair. It was during the time of Prohibition, and she had a little business going on the side.

"Blind Susie was a grandmother of somebody who lived here in Commerce," said Richard Chambers, 78. Chambers had a friend who lived next door to Susie, and so he was familiar with the story.

"She just more or less sat on her porch, rocked back and forth, and she had her long skirts and so forth and she would hide quarts of white lightning under it," Chambers said. "And somebody would come up to buy some and she would sell them a quart of it, just lift up the skirt, get the quart and hand it to them. That's all she did was sit on that porch and rock."

But here's the haunting legacy left by Blind Susie, known in a certain area of Banks County for selling her moonshine by a covered bridge: It's a different covered bridge.

"About 15, 20 miles the way the crow flies," Chambers said of the distance between Hyder Bridge and the one neighboring Blind Susie. "I actually think it's over the Beaver Dam Creek."

But in recent memory, apparently someone from the Banks County Chamber of Commerce decided a good marketing technique would be to attach Blind Susie to the last remaining covered bridge in the county, he said. So, while longtime Lula residents, who grew up across the Banks County line near the Hyder Bridge, would swear they never heard of Blind Susie, her name remains affixed to the bridge in other places - including information from the DOT.

"I think that must be a made-up name. I don't know anything about no Blind Susie," said 71-year-old Ed Garrison, who lives just down Ga. 51 from Antioch Road.

Garrison does remember the bridge when it was the main route between Gillsville and Lula, though.

"Sometimes it was hard to get the horses and mules to get through it," he said. "They act crazy, run sideways and act skittish. Some of them walk through it like it's nothin', but others will try to act crazy and try to start up the wagon or buggy or whatever you have behind it."