Union Covered Bridge

Union Covered Bridge, named for the nearby Union Church, is the odd one out among Missouri's four surviving covered bridges: while the other three are Howe trusses, Union is built on a Burr-arch truss, using paired king posts and two great arches running the length of the bridge to carry its load — a design slightly bowed upstream to help it stand up to flooding. Local legend holds that its enclosed, barn-like appearance was meant to make skittish farm animals more willing to cross.

Monroe County authorized construction over the Elk Fork of the Salt River in April 1870, after two earlier bridges at the site had failed, and builder Joseph Elliott completed the oak-frame structure later that year, opening it to traffic on September 17, 1871, at a cost of $5,500. By the 1960s the bridge was sliding into neglect, and in 1967 — the same year the Missouri legislature moved all the state's remaining covered bridges into the state park system — a flood tore away part of its siding and destroyed a nearby covered bridge in Mexico, Missouri, entirely. Union Covered Bridge was patched using salvaged timbers from that lost bridge and further restored in 1968. It was closed to vehicle traffic in 1970 after suffering damage from an oversized truck, then added to the National Register of Historic Places that same year. The bridge has kept getting knocked around by weather since — it survived the Great Flood of 1993 but took damage again in 2008 — with a federal grant funding repairs completed in 2011 and a full restoration wrapping up in 2019. It's occasionally used today for weddings and baptisms at the surrounding state historic site.