The Cataract Falls Covered Bridge

Beside the largest waterfall by volume in Indiana stands the last covered bridge in Owen County. It crosses Mill Creek just above the rushing cascades at Cataract. The Smith Bridge Company of Toledo, Ohio, built it in eighteen seventy six.

What makes it rare is the design. It is a Smith truss, a double intersecting pattern, and one of the few such bridges left in Indiana. The village of Cataract grew up around the falls after early settlers built mills here for flour, wool, barrels, and lumber.

For more than a century wagons and cars rumbled across this bridge until a new concrete span took the traffic in nineteen eighty eight. Now it carries foot travelers only, a wooden tunnel listening to the falls below.