Kidd's Mill Covered Bridge

The covered bridge spanning the Shenango River here was built in eighteen sixty-eight, and it holds a distinction that makes it unique in the entire state: it is said to be the only surviving Pennsylvania bridge built using the all-wooden truss design patented by Robert Smith of Tippecanoe City, Ohio. Most nineteenth-century covered bridges used a handful of competing truss systems, but the Smith truss was rare even in its own day, and this is the last one standing in Mercer County. The bridge was carefully restored in the late twentieth century.

Covered bridges were not roofed for romance but for practicality: the wooden deck and load-bearing trusses could last decades if kept dry, but would rot in just a few years if left exposed to weather. This one has outlasted nearly everything around it.