Cox Ford Covered Bridge

The Cox Ford Covered Bridge was built in 1913 by Joseph A. Britton to replace an 1896 iron bridge swept away in the catastrophic flood of that year, one of the worst in Indiana history. In an unusual and resourceful move, Britton reused arch timbers salvaged from the nearby Armiesburg Covered Bridge, itself roughly sixty years old and also destroyed in the same flood, incorporating recycled historic material into the new 176-foot single-span Burr Arch Truss structure. The bridge's abutments still rest on the original iron bridge's stone piers, later topped with poured concrete to raise the deck about five feet above the earlier grade. It crosses Sugar Creek along the western edge of what is now Turkey Run State Park, one of Indiana's most visited natural landmarks, and has long been popular with anglers; local legend recalls a 47-pound catfish pulled from beneath the bridge on June 2, 1920. The bridge's deck was replaced by the county highway department in 1975, and it received a fresh coat of paint during a Works Progress Administration project in the 1930s. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 1978, as part of the Parke County Covered Bridges Multiple Property Submission, the Cox Ford Covered Bridge remains open to vehicle traffic today.