Mecca Covered Bridge
Indiana
Parke County, Indiana has more covered bridges than any county in the United States, and the Mecca Covered Bridge, built in eighteen seventy-three, is among the oldest still standing. The bridge spans one hundred seventy-six feet across Big Raccoon Creek, built by the county's most prolific bridge contractor, Joseph J. Daniels, using a Burr Arch Truss design that combined strength and economy.
Original cost: seven thousand six hundred fifty dollars. The bridge survived four major floods, in eighteen seventy-five, nineteen thirteen, nineteen fifty-seven, and nineteen ninety, and was bypassed by a modern road in nineteen sixty-five. It was rebuilt in nineteen eighty and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-eight.
The covered roof was not decorative: it protected the structural wooden truss from rain and snow, extending the life of a bridge that would otherwise have rotted within decades.
