Sugar Creek Covered Bridge

Sugar Creek Covered Bridge, also called the Glenarm or Hedley Bridge, spans Sugar Creek just west of Glenarm, ten miles south of Springfield. Built by Thomas Black, sources disagree on exactly when — some date it to 1827, others to 1880 — but its multiple-kingpost-with-arch truss construction places it firmly among Illinois's genuinely historic 19th-century bridges. It carried road traffic until 1984, when it was closed and preserved rather than replaced.

The State of Illinois acquired the bridge in 1963 and gave it an extensive renovation two years later. Today it sits inside a spacious park once maintained by the Sangamon County Historical Society and now run by the city of Chatham — a popular gathering spot for picnics, family reunions, weddings, and senior-photo shoots, equipped with modern surveillance, sprinklers, and fire alarms to protect the historic structure. A residential building boom in recent years around Glenarm has only increased the bridge's local profile, even as the surrounding park retains its quiet, small-town character. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, it's considered the oldest of Illinois's five originally-recognized historic covered bridges.