Even though you see enough corn driving through the Midwest, it’s still a little hard to imagine 5.1 million acres of corn (or anything else). Yet that’s how much corn – maize, Zea mays – was planted in Indiana alone in 2024, according to the Indiana Corn Marketing Council, with 5.05 million acres harvested. Even after being in the thick of a summer crop, the thought of that much boggles the mind.

We didn’t go to Parke County, Indiana, in late July to admire the corn, though I did take a moment to make a few higher-than-an-elephant’s-eye corn pictures. You don’t have to go nearly that far to find corn. We came for the covered bridges, spending a Saturday night in the county seat of Rockville, Indiana, and out looking for bridges on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. To get to them, you have to take to the small roads crisscrossing the area, some paved, some not, but all pretty high quality.

Roads lead to bridges, such as Sim Smith Bridge, vintage 1883, which crosses Leatherwood Creek. “Locally, this bridge has the reputation as haunted,” says a guide map I picked up. Uh-huh.

West-central Indiana is well-watered, a welter of creeks feeding the Wabash River. Covered wooden bridges cross many of them, each of more than a century old. Cedar is the main material. I’d guess being well-watered was good for the farmers here in the late 19th century, except for one thing: they complicated shipping one’s crop to buyers, either to animal feed processors or human-food makers. So, bridges.

Mecca Bridge, near Mecca, Indiana, across the Big Raccoon Creek. 1873.

Crooks Bridge, across Little Raccoon Creek. Competed in 1856.

Neet Bridge, 1904, also across Little Raccoon Creek.

Local organizations count 31 historic bridges in Parke County, each with a name and known origin. Local organizations promote historic bridge tourism, as well they should, including a give-away paper guide (Parke County Guide) that other guides should aspire to, so detailed and useful is it. But I can also report that even on a summer weekend, when it was hot but not dangerously so, or especially humid, overtourism hasn’t spoiled the place. Most of the time, at the half-dozen or so bridges we visited on a weekend, we were alone. Even the bridges that still carried auto traffic had little, so that walking across each on foot was never an issue.

An carpenter (and lawyer) named J.A. Britton (d. 1929) built many of the bridges in Parke County in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, presumably as the organizer of a small construction crew, but also with the sort of hands-on approach that had him laboring alongside the other men. I like to think so, anyway, but whatever the arrangement, bridge building was his business, and he built them to last. Some are still vehicle bridges. Others are pedestrian bridges. Most are in situ, with a few moved to parks or other places.

Parke County was enough of a market for a few decades that J.A. Britton had a competitor, J.J. Daniels, who left behind some structures as well, such as the Neet and Mecca bridges.

Most of the Parke County bridges are Burr Arch Truss bridges, following a design that combines a truss and an arch, invented by a bridge builder back east in the early 19th century, one Theodore Burr. Seems like the design works really well for this kind of bridge.

Not all the bridges are out in the corn-planted countryside. Bridgeton Bridge, crossing Big Raccoon Creek, is in the small town of Bridgeton, Indiana, which includes a former mill rising over the creek, now retail. Unlike the others we saw, it dates from 2006, a faithful replica of an earlier bridge destroyed by wanker arsonists.

Over a waterfall, for that extra picturesqueness.

The view from the bridge.

The creek below was deep enough to allow teenagers, some boys but also at least one girl, to jump off the modern vehicle bridge next to the wooden bridge as a matter of fun, not grievous injury, because while we were around, we saw and heard them doing so. Good to see kids out having fun that didn’t involve small electronic boxes, by gar.