Buttonwood Covered Bridge

The Buttonwood Covered Bridge crosses Blockhouse Creek in Jackson Township, Lycoming County, and at seventy-four feet in length it is the shortest of the three covered bridges still standing in this county. It was built in either eighteen seventy-eight or eighteen ninety-eight, sources differ using a queen post and king post truss combination, a practical hybrid design favored for modest-span crossings. The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen eighty and underwent a major restoration in nineteen ninety-eight.

Local tradition holds that the bridge washed downstream in a serious flood and was hauled back to its original site by horses once the water receded, a story that speaks to how much the community valued keeping this particular crossing in place. Today it sits just a few miles south of the Tioga County line along Route Fifteen, still carrying traffic, one of the more quietly resilient structures in this part of Pennsylvania.