Covered Bridge Gawking (Part 2)

Tweet

Unless you’re an architect or heavily into the intricacies of the construction of covered bridges, I’ll have to agree that a covered bridge is a covered bridge is a covered bridge. There are different ways in which they were built, and various other things that an expert can see but my untrained eye cannot. Still, I love looking at covered bridges....not so much for the bridge itself as for what’s around it. My last bridge stop yesterday in Parke County was the Bridgeton Covered Bridge. Talk about “what’s around it”!!!! There’s a dam right under the bridge that provides a man made waterfall into Big Raccoon Creek. The town of Bridgeton, a very small village that obviously relies on the summer tourist season (everything except the mill, which is the oldest continually-operating mill west of the Alleghenies, was closed for the season), is cute and quaint, and probably packed with people in the summer and early autumn. In late autumn, however, there were only a couple of other cars stopped to admire the beauty of the creek and the bridge. The bridge has a history and a half. The bridge I walked across was actually the fourth Bridgeton Bridge. The first two were not covered, and they were destroyed in relatively rapid fashion after one person’s wagon crossed it. In 1868 the bridge was built a third time, this time covered. Then, in 2005, a man burned the historic bridge, resulting in the current bridge being constructed the next year. There’s a park on one side and parking on the other. The bridge is closed to everything but pedestrian and bicycle traffic, making it a pleasant walk across Raccoon Creek. A lovely ending to a lovely day of covered bridge viewing. Given that there are over three dozen covered bridges in that one county and I only saw seven of them, I’ll definitely have to go back for another tour! COLLAGE: 1 & 2: the bridge from each side of the creek. 3: the creek from the center of the bridge. 4. The Bridgeton Mill’s sign proclaiming its historic significance.