SOURCE: Owens, David M. “Bierce and Biography: The Location of Owl Creek Bridge.” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 26, no. 3 (spring 1994): 82-9.

In the following essay, Owens provides a biographical context for “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and investigates the actual location of Owl Creek, finding it to be an amalgamation of Alabama and Tennessee locales.

“A man stood on a railroad bridge in northern Alabama,” begins Ambrose Bierce's most famous short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Set in the American Civil War, the story describes the hanging of Peyton Farquhar, a Southern planter caught attempting to sabotage a railroad bridge considered vital by the Union Army. At the onset, Bierce clearly sets the action of the story in Alabama. In a historical context, the setting makes sense. Late in the Civil War, the Union and the Confederacy struggled for control of the rail lines in northern...