Crown Point Bridge
Lake County, Center Township, at Crown Point. Built 1878, relocated 1933, 85 ft. long. Originally stood near Milroy, Rush County, before its move.
The Crown Point Bridge is Lake County's only covered bridge, standing today over an ornamental gully — not a natural waterway — on the grounds of the Lake County Fairgrounds in Crown Point. It was not built for this location: the single-span, 85-foot Burr Arch truss bridge (about 105 feet including its 10-foot end portals) was constructed in 1878 near Milroy in Rush County, originally carrying traffic over the Little Flatrock River as the Milroy (or Shelbourne) Covered Bridge, built by Archibald M. Kennedy & Sons. When Rush County highway improvements threatened the aging bridge with demolition in 1933, Crown Point resident John Wheeler — son of the city's first mayor — purchased the structure for just $25 to save it from destruction. With the help of Works Progress Administration labor, the bridge was dismantled, hauled roughly 150 miles northwest, and rebuilt at the fairgrounds over an artificial gully as a scenic shelter rather than a functioning river crossing. It remains there today, a rare example of an Indiana covered bridge relocated wholesale between counties, and continues to serve as a fairgrounds attraction and pedestrian shelter, with a clearance of 16 feet wide by 14 feet high.
