Winnie's Covered Bridge
San Augustine County, near Hensarling Ranch. Built 1992, 36 ft. long. The only authentically truss-built covered bridge in Texas, a Town lattice span over a spring-fed creek.
Winnie's Covered Bridge crosses a spring off Spears Creek on the Hensarling Ranch in San Augustine County, deep in the East Texas Piney Woods near the Louisiana border. Built in 1992, the 36-foot bridge is constructed on a genuine Town lattice truss — the same interlocking-plank design patented by architect Ithiel Town in 1820 and used across the historic Northeast — making it, by most accounts, the only covered bridge in Texas built on an authentic engineered truss rather than a simple decorative stringer span.
Texas's lone 19th-century covered bridge, an 1856 crossing of the San Marcos River near Gonzales, disappeared long ago, and the state's covered-bridge-building era largely coincided with the turbulent years of the Republic, statehood, and Civil War, leaving little opportunity for the tradition to take root. The roughly 17 covered bridges that survive in Texas today are almost entirely private, modern stringer structures on ranches, golf courses, and theme parks. Winnie's Covered Bridge, built by owners of the Hensarling Ranch specifically to replicate genuine 19th-century carpentry, stands apart as the state's one true nod to the historic Town lattice tradition.