Covered Bridges You Can Still Drive Through

Walk across most covered bridges left in America today and you're standing on a museum piece — restored, bypassed, and closed to anything heavier than foot traffic. But a genuine subset of the country's surviving covered bridges are still doing the job they were built for: carrying cars, trucks, and daily commuters across the same rivers and creeks they've spanned for a century or more. By our count, roughly 250 covered bridges across 18 states are still open to vehicle traffic in some form, whether that's a full-weight county road or a single lane with a 5-ton limit and a prayer.

By the numbers

Pennsylvania alone accounts for more drivable covered bridges than every other state on this list combined but Ohio — a reminder that the Northeast and Midwest didn't just build the most covered bridges historically, they've also done the best job keeping them in daily service.

The oldest bridge you can still drive across

Hassenplug Covered Bridge, built in 1825 in Union County, Pennsylvania, is the oldest covered bridge on this list still carrying vehicle traffic — two centuries old and still doing its job over Buffalo Creek. Kentucky's Goddard Bridge, dated only to "the early 19th century," may be older still, but without a firm construction year it can't claim the title outright.

The longest bridge you can still drive across

At 613 feet, Ohio's Smolen-Gulf Covered Bridge isn't just the longest covered bridge in the country overall — built new in 2008, it's also the longest one you can still drive through, by a wide margin. Among genuinely historic spans, that title goes to New Hampshire's Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge (1866, 449 feet), which still carries alternating one-lane traffic between New Hampshire and Vermont across the Connecticut River, a century and a half after it was built.

States down to their last drivable bridge

Five states have exactly one covered bridge left that vehicles can still cross: Arizona (the 1976 Pinedale Bridge), Florida (the 1964 Coral Springs Bridge), Kentucky (the early-1800s Goddard Bridge, weight-limited to 4 tons), Rhode Island (the 1993 Swamp Meadow Bridge, the state's only covered bridge on any public road), and Virginia (the 1894 Meems Bottom Bridge, the longest covered bridge left in the state).

Drivable, but just barely

Staying open to traffic often means staying open under real restrictions. Indiana's Snow Hill Covered Bridge carries a 12-ton rating; Oregon's Neal Lane Covered Bridge is limited to 5 tons and closed to large trucks and RVs; Indiana's Adams Mill Bridge has been restricted to "very light vehicle use" since 1974. These aren't loopholes — they're the price of keeping a 19th-century wooden truss in daily service into the 21st century, and they explain why so many of the bridges still open to traffic post weight limits at all.

It's also why the exceptions matter. Illinois's Red Covered Bridge — the state's only 19th-century covered bridge that still carried regular automobile traffic, at roughly 275 vehicles a day — was closed indefinitely after an oversized semi-truck struck it in November 2023, the second such strike in two years. It's a reminder that every bridge on this list is one badly judged truck away from joining the pedestrian-only column instead.