Gilpin's Falls Covered Bridge
Cecil County, North East (Bay View). Built 1860-61, 119 ft. long. The longest covered bridge remaining in Maryland, rehabilitated in 2010.
Gilpin's Falls Covered Bridge was built over the winter of 1860-61 by local Cecil County bridgewright Joseph George Johnson, who raised it across North East Creek for $2,000, just upstream of Samuel Gilpin's mills and the millpond formed by his dam. At 119 feet including its shelter-panel overhangs, it's the longest covered bridge standing anywhere in Maryland today, a Burr arch truss in which the wooden arch, upper chord, and diagonals carry the load in compression while the vertical members and lower chord work in tension — a structural balancing act that Theodore Burr patented back in 1817.
The State Roads Commission and the Historical Society of Cecil County restored the bridge in 1959, and a more extensive rehabilitation followed in 2010, carried out by engineering firm Wallace, Montgomery & Associates alongside specialist timber-frame contractors from New England and beyond. The bridge is closed to vehicle traffic and listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2008, standing near North East as a monument to 19th-century Cecil County craftsmanship at 13.5 feet wide and a full century and a half old.
