New Brownsville Bridge
Bartholomew County, Columbus Township, in Columbus. Built 1840, now 85 ft. long. Relocated 1985-86 from Brownsville, Union County, where it crossed the Whitewater River.
The New Brownsville Covered Bridge has one of Indiana's most dramatic relocation histories. It was built between 1837 and 1840 by Adam Mason and his father in the town of Brownsville, Union County, spanning the East Fork of the Whitewater River with a Long (through) truss, the only example of that truss type surviving in Indiana. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, it was delisted the following year after being dismantled and documented by the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER IN-27) in 1974 for an intended move to Eagle Creek Park in Indianapolis; instead it went into storage. After Columbus's Clifty covered bridge at Mill Race Park was destroyed by arson in 1985, the Brownsville bridge was reassembled there in 1985-86, shortened to roughly 85 feet to fit its new site, and rehabilitated again in 1991. Today it spans a channel of Mill Race Park's pond, near where the Flatrock and Driftwood rivers join, in Columbus, Bartholomew County, more than 60 miles from its original site.
