Cedar Ford Covered Bridge

Unlike the other bridges in this set, the Cedar Ford Covered Bridge is a modern structure, not a 19th-century survivor. It carries Old Maple Grove Road over Beanblossom Creek in Washington Township, Monroe County, near Bean Blossom, roughly 200 feet east of where the historic McMillan (also called Williams, or Millikan's Ford) Covered Bridge once stood — a 125-foot 1871 Smith-truss bridge destroyed by arson on June 29, 1976, leaving Monroe County without a covered bridge for more than four decades. Between roughly 2016 and 2019, Monroe County commissioned a full replacement: a new 127-foot Burr Arch truss bridge built using traditional Kennedy-style timber-frame design and construction methods, engineered by Kurdziel Barker and built by CLR Construction of Bloomington at a cost of about $1.6 million. It opened to traffic on June 9, 2019, following completion that May. Functionally, it is a genuinely operational vehicle-and-pedestrian bridge — not a decorative stand-alone replica — combining traditional joinery with a modern standing-seam metal roof. The bridge anchors the Beanblossom Creek greenway/park corridor north of Bloomington and restored Monroe County's covered-bridge heritage after a 43-year gap.