Wheeling Bridge
Gibson County, Washington Township, at Wheeling. Built 1877, 164 ft. long Smith Type IV truss over the Patoka River; bypassed for vehicles c. 1980, now pedestrian-only.
Built in 1877 by contractor William T. Washer, representing the Smith Bridge Company of Toledo, Ohio, the Wheeling Bridge carries a single-span Smith Type IV (triple-web) truss roughly 164 feet across the Patoka River at the unincorporated village of Wheeling in Washington Township, Gibson County. Its stone abutments and wing walls were quarried locally and later reinforced. The crossing linked southwestern Gibson County farm roads to the county seat at Princeton and replaced an earlier bridge lost to flooding. Flooding pressures on the site eased after part of the Patoka River was rerouted via a drainage ditch in the early 1920s. The bridge was bypassed by a new roadway around 1980 to take vehicle traffic off the aging structure, with renovation and landscaping work following around 2000. Along with Gibson County's other surviving Smith truss span, the Old Red Bridge, it was put forward for National Register of Historic Places listing through a 2024-2025 nomination led by Indiana Landmarks' Historic Bridges Initiative. Today it remains closed to vehicles and open only to pedestrians.
