Eldean Covered Bridge

Spanning the Great Miami River since eighteen sixty, the Eldean Covered Bridge is one of the longest surviving covered bridges in Ohio. Miami County commissioned it, and the result stretched two hundred twenty-four feet across the river. The wooden roof was not decorative.

Covered bridges survived far longer than open ones because the roof protected the structural timbers from rain and rot. An uncovered wooden bridge might last a decade; a covered one could stand for a century or more, as this one has. It serves the farms and mills on both sides of the Great Miami and carries its neighborhood name, Eldean, and still stands as a working example of mid-nineteenth-century engineering.

Ohio once had many more covered bridges than it does today, and this is among the finest of those that remain.