Gilpin's Falls Covered Bridge

The covered bridge spanning North East Creek near the town of North East, Maryland was built around eighteen sixty by a contractor named George Johnson, using a Burr arch truss, one of the strongest timber bridge designs ever devised. At one hundred nineteen feet, it is the longest surviving covered bridge in Maryland and the only one on public land in Cecil County. The site has history older than the bridge itself: Samuel Gilpin operated a flour mill and dam here as early as seventeen thirty-five, and the bridge was erected upstream of his millpond. Of the six covered bridges still standing in all of Maryland, this one has endured the longest span and the longest story, last rehabilitated in two thousand nine and ten using traditional timber framing methods.