Fallasburg Covered Bridge
Kent County, Vergennes Township. Built 1871, 100 ft. long. Michigan's oldest covered bridge still in its original location, one of only a handful in the state open to vehicles.
Fallasburg Covered Bridge crosses the Flat River about five miles north of Lowell, in a settlement founded in 1837 by John W. and Silas S. Fallas that grew to include a chair factory, sawmill, and gristmill. The village's first wooden bridges, built starting around 1840, kept losing the fight against high water and spring ice jams, washing out one after another until the town brought in Jared N. Bresee — the same builder responsible for the Ada Covered Bridge nearby — to build a proper covered bridge in 1871, at a cost of $1,500.
Built on lattice-work trusses of white pine timber, the bridge has needed periodic reinforcement over the century and a half since: its original abutments were replaced with concrete in 1905, and it went through extensive repair campaigns in 1945 and again in 1994. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places and remains one of Michigan's oldest covered bridges still standing on its original site — and one of only four in the state still open to vehicle traffic, alongside Whites Bridge, Langley Covered Bridge, and Zehnder's Holz-Brücke.