Hillsboro Covered Bridge
Fleming County, near Hillsboro. Built c. 1865-1870, 94 ft. long. Also known as the Hillsboro-Grange City Covered Bridge, recently renovated as a pedestrian landmark.
The Hillsboro Covered Bridge, known locally as the Hillsboro-Grange City Covered Bridge, spans Fox Creek in Fleming County next to Kentucky Route 111, probably built in the late 1860s by the same contractor who raised the nearby Ringos Mill Covered Bridge a few miles up the same creek. Its single 94-foot span is a textbook example of the multiple-kingpost truss Theodore Burr patented in 1814 — patent bridges like this were the bread and butter of early bridge engineers, who typically earned a dollar for every linear foot built under license of the design. The yellow pine timbers use double-shouldered braces, red stone abutments, and siding that was originally double-layered yellow poplar, now covered in corrugated sheet metal.
The bridge carried traffic until 1968, when a concrete replacement went up fifty yards upstream and Hillsboro was left to stand idle. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. In recent years, Fleming County has put roughly $2.6 million into renovating the structure; the work won't reopen it to vehicles, but it will let visitors walk through and take in the view of Fox Creek much as travelers did a century and a half ago.
