Traders Point Bridge

Traders Point Covered Bridge was built around 1880 by local bridge builder Josiah Durfee, an eight-panel Howe truss originally spanning Fishback Creek in the Traders Point area of northwest Marion County (Pike Township), near the old trading-post settlement that gave the neighborhood its name. In 1959, the Indiana State Highway Commission condemned the bridge as part of improvements to West 86th Street feeding traffic onto the newly built Interstate 65. Rather than see it demolished, farmer DeWitt V. Brown purchased the bridge and, in 1960, had it moved about half a mile to his own land off West 86th Street, where it survives today — no longer over open water, but preserved as a structure on private property. It is the only historic covered bridge remaining in Marion County, out of the many that once dotted central Indiana, and one of fewer than 90 covered bridges left statewide out of more than 600 built in the 19th century. Decades of deferred maintenance have left the bridge in fragile condition; Indiana Landmarks named it to its 10 Most Endangered list, and a 2022-funded feasibility study estimated that rehabilitating and relocating the bridge to Eagle Creek Park would cost roughly $2 million. The bridge remains on private land near 82nd Street, not open to the public, with its long-term preservation still unresolved.