Gudgeonville Covered Bridge
Near Erie, Pennsylvania
The Gudgeonville Covered Bridge stood for one hundred and forty years over Elk Creek in Girard Township, Erie County. William Sherman built it in eighteen sixty-eight using a multiple king-post truss, an eighty-four-foot span that outlasted one hundred forty Pennsylvania winters. The National Register of Historic Places added it in nineteen eighty, recognizing it as the oldest of Erie County's three surviving covered bridges.
Then, just after one in the morning on November eighth, two thousand eight, someone poured gasoline on the old timbers and lit a match. Within hours, the bridge was gone. Police arrested two people in December who admitted to the arson.
Girard Township salvaged what charred beams remained and offered them to residents as keepsakes, a small gesture toward what a community loses when someone destroys what cannot be replaced.
