Mary's River Covered Bridge
Randolph County, near Chester. Built 1854, 98 ft. long. Illinois' oldest surviving covered bridge and the only one left in the southern part of the state.
Mary's River Covered Bridge is the oldest of Illinois' surviving covered bridges and the only one remaining anywhere in Southern Illinois. Built in 1854 as part of a plank toll road connecting Chester — then a busy Mississippi River port — to the community of Bremen, the bridge let farmers haul agricultural products to market over the Little Marys River without fording it directly. It was built almost entirely of native white oak, hand-hewn throughout, using a Burr arch design with double arches flanking king posts on either side of the structure.
The toll road and bridge passed into Randolph County's hands in the early 1870s, and the bridge kept carrying road traffic all the way until 1930. In 1936, with the crossing's usefulness as a public road fading, the State of Illinois took ownership specifically to preserve it — an unusually early and deliberate act of covered bridge conservation. Restored again in 1954 and 2005, the bridge today sits in a quiet picnic area and park just off Illinois Route 150, a lasting reminder of the Mississippi River trade routes that once ran through Chester.
