North Manchester Bridge
Wabash County, Chester Township, at North Manchester. Built 1872, 150 ft. long Smith Type IV truss over the Eel River; the widest covered bridge in use in Indiana.
The North Manchester Bridge was built in 1872 by the Smith Bridge Company of Toledo, Ohio, using the Smith Type IV truss, a heavier variant of Robert W. Smith's patented design featuring double-intersecting diagonal bracing, engineered as the strongest of the Smith truss variations. It spans the Eel River on South Mill Street at the southeast edge of North Manchester in Chester Township, Wabash County, measuring 150 feet long and 18 feet wide, making it the widest covered bridge currently in use in the state. Its board-and-batten siding is painted barn red with a white gable front, sheltered by a gable roof with extended eaves. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 30, 1982, it is one of only two surviving covered bridges from an original roughly 30 built across Wabash County, and one of just a handful of remaining Smith truss bridges statewide. The bridge has undergone periodic rehabilitation, including roof, siding, and structural repairs, and continues to carry one-lane vehicle traffic alongside a pedestrian walkway.
