Salem Crossing Bridge
Boone County, Eagle Township, near Zionsville. Built 1972 — a modern private covered bridge, not a 19th-century original, over Fishback Creek.
Unlike Indiana's other covered bridges, Salem Crossing Bridge is a 20th-century creation with no NRHP listing or connection to the state's historic bridge-building era. Completed in 1972 by Zionsville businessman E.J. Murphy, a Purdue-trained engineer who built Robbins Electric into one of the country's largest electrical contracting firms, the roughly 47-foot Howe-style covered span crosses Fishback Creek on his private Hunt Club Road estate west of Zionsville, in Eagle Township. Murphy built the bridge using salvaged lumber from his childhood home in Seymour, Indiana, both for sentimental value and to provide a working crossing for livestock on the property. He originally named it "Horatio's Crossing" after a supposed war-hero relative, Horatio Deppert, though family lore later revealed Murphy had simply purchased an old photograph of a stranger at a garage sale to inspire his children. The bridge's 1972 dedication drew Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Senators Vance Hartke and Birch Bayh, and actor Lorne Greene. After Murphy's death in 1981, the Kennerk family bought the property in 1982 and renamed the span Salem's Crossing in 1996. It remains private property, closed to public traffic, but has hosted more than twenty weddings and countless family photo sessions, becoming an informal local landmark despite never carrying public road traffic or historic designation.
