Ferry Bridge at Gosport

For most of the eighteen hundreds, the only way across the White River here was by ferry. An early ferryman ran the first one near Gosport, poling travelers and wagons from bank to bank for a fee. Other ferrymen followed over the decades, until the river crossings slowly gave way to bridges.

Covered and iron bridges followed, and finally the structure that still stands today. The builders raised a long Pennsylvania truss highway span, ending generations of river crossings by boat. Cars eventually moved to a modern road, and later the historic truss was restored for people on foot.

Walk it, and you trace a route once measured by the pull of a ferryman's rope.