Jackson Covered Bridge (Illinois)

The Jackson Covered Bridge carries a stretch of the historic National Road — now U.S. Route 40 — over the Embarras River at Greenup, and its site has an origin story that reaches back further than any other Illinois crossing on this list. The first bridge here was built in 1832, and local legend holds that a young Abraham Lincoln, working alongside his father and a cousin, helped with its construction. An 1834 inspection report confirmed a Jackson Truss covered bridge stood on the site at that time.

That original bridge didn't survive the 19th century's floods: it washed out in 1865 and was replaced with a more conventional crossing a decade later, which itself washed out again in 1912. A three-span bridge went up in 1920 and lasted until its eastern pier was damaged by severe flooding in 1996. In a rare case of a community researching and reviving a design nearly two centuries old, engineers rediscovered the original 1832 Jackson truss configuration and used it again when the current bridge was completed in 2000 — 168 years after Lincoln's bridge first went up on the same spot. At 192 to 200 feet, depending on the source, the rebuilt Burr arch bridge is the longest covered bridge in Illinois today, and has become a centerpiece of Greenup's historic-district revitalization along the old National Road.