Red Mill Covered Bridge
Waupaca County, Dayton (Rural). Built 1970, 40 ft. long. A Town truss footbridge over the Crystal River beside an 1855 grist mill turned gift shop.
Red Mill Covered Bridge crosses the Crystal River next to the Red Mill, a 2.5-story frame gristmill built in 1855 to grind flour, cornmeal, and livestock feed for the farming communities of Little Hope and Waupaca. The mill ran for more than a century before closing and being sold at auction in 1959; builders Sterling Shrock and a partner purchased it and began renovations the following year for new owners Delmar and Edna Schmidt, who converted the old mill into a furniture and furnishings shop.
Shrock and his collaborator added the covered bridge over the Crystal River in 1970, a 40-foot Town truss span built to complement the mill's rustic character, and followed it a few years later with a small Chapel-in-the-Woods addition in 1974. Today the mill operates as the Red Mill Gift Shop and Wedding Chapel in the unincorporated community of Rural, part of the town of Dayton — a favorite stop for creek-wading, ice cream, and photographs of one of Wisconsin's more picturesque small covered bridges.