Parks Covered Bridge
Obion County, Trimble. Built 1904, relocated 1997, 33 ft. long. Believed to be Tennessee's only king post truss covered bridge, and the state's only historic covered bridge west of the Tennessee River valley.
Parks Covered Bridge, also called the Emerson E. Parks Farm Bridge, began life in 1904 as a strictly practical structure: Obion County farmer Emerson E. Parks built it to span a drainage ditch dividing two of his own fields, roughly 20 miles from Union City in south central Obion County. Despite its humble agricultural origin, local traffic used the bridge too, until the state built a modern route with its own bridge nearby in 1928. It's believed to be the only known king post truss covered bridge remaining anywhere in Tennessee, and it's also the only one of the state's historic covered bridges located in the western part of Tennessee — every other survivor sits in the eastern half of the state.
The bridge's original gable roof didn't last: a tornado tore it off in 1914. Despite that damage, the structure endured long enough to be added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Its final test came in 1997, when erosion at the original farm site began to threaten the historic structure directly. Rather than lose it, the community salvaged as much of the original material as possible and rebuilt the bridge at Parks Plaza in nearby Trimble, where the small king post span stands today — relocated, but preserved.
