Covered Bridges Transcript
- ♪ Just to sit among the sycamores and leave the rush behind ♪
♪ To cross those covered bridges and go back away in time. ♪
♪ There's a peace and warmth of home around me ♪
♪ As I walk along ♪
♪ There is a love in the air, you can feel everywhere ♪
♪ And you're never really there alone ♪
♪ Indiana, that's my home ♪
- It's the covered bridge center of the world. We have more covered bridges in Park County than any other County in the state.
- [Narrator] Between 1820 and 1922, some 600 cupboard bridges were built in Indiana. The heaviest concentration of these bridges was in Park County. Thanks to the number of streams that needed to be crossed, the amount of industry needing good roads, and the fact that two of Indiana's most prolific bridge builders lived there. 65 bridges were built in all. 33 still remain. And remarkably 22 are still driven through. Every October, people from across the state and across the country descend upon Park County to visit or revisit the bridges during the Covered Bridge Festival.
- City people have a lot of modern things to see, but I think deep in their heart they want to go back to things that they had in their childhood or had heard of from their grandparents or great grandparents in the long ago era.
- When people come for the Covered Bridge Festival, it is harvest time. And I think most of the people growing up have some farm connection. They remember grandpa or whoever on the farm harvesting. So you can come, the leaves are all changed. It's a beautiful scenery. And I think also the magnificence of the bridge. Just to see that something that somebody did is still there. Some old thing that someone did.
- And people would come for the Bridge Festival and really talk about how marvelous, how unusual they were. They were talking about that this year. And you know, we don't stop to think about that.
- The real pride, I think, in the bridges didn't take place actually until the Covered Bridge Festival. And we found out that there was quite a bit of regional pride. "This is my covered bridge, and we're taking care of this covered bridge." But pretty soon those attitudes, I think, spread to a county-wide thing where people do take pride in them now.
- [Narrator] Inevitably, the locals are asked the question. Why are the bridges covered?
- One person told me that they heard that they had the roofs and the sides because the horses was scared of the water. But I didn't think that was so.
- If you were in a horse and buggy, you could get your horse out of the rain. However, they were primarily built to protect the structure of the bridge, the floor of the bridge.
- Oh gosh, well, that's why they're still here. If you cover the bridges, they don't get wet. Most of the wood that's in these bridges is still original.
- [Narrator] There were two major bridge builders in this area. J.J. Daniels and J.A. Britton. Between the two of them, they built over 70% of the covered bridges in Park County, many of which are still standing today. Each builder had his own style, something most easily seen in the bridge portals. Daniels opted for an arched portal while Britton preferred an angled one. The actual labor was carried out by local craftsmen who took their skill and knowledge of building barns and applied it to building bridges.
- They're manmade. And it's not every man that can fit one of them together. Every piece has to just be just absolutely on balance and just, it just can't be off.
- It was always a remarkable feat to me that they would have these things. In fact, J.J. Daniels has several bridges, of course, that are still standing and are taking loads of 10, 15 tons, which is by far more than they were ever intended to build.
- Considering the strength of the bridges, the sign, "Cross this bridge at a walk." painted over the portal on virtually every one of the bridges may seem ironic.
- What actually it meant originally was if the horses went through at a trot or a run, the shaking could actually destroy the bridge. So that's why every bridge has that sign up.
- [Narrator] These signs, now outdated, may suggest that the bridges too are relics of the past, romantic reminders of better, simpler times. But the bridges have held up well and not just physically. They also continue to function as popular recreational and social spots.
- We danced in the bridge sometimes at our a Sunday school group. With that group, we'd go down at night and park a car on so far apart, you know, with the bridge. Turn the lights on and turn the radio on in the car.
- Bridges are a historical place where we have a lot of people visiting them. They're used for picnics.
- I remember as kids, we would jump off the bridges down into the water. We would slide down between the outside wood on the side, paneling on the side and the beams inside. We'd slide down there and hang down and finally drop down into water for our drills for the day.
- I've jumped out the window a few times. Hang off the bars.
- I'm not stupid enough.
- You hang here for a little bit. Then you stabilize and then you drop.
- You come down here on Saturdays and stuff and there's 50 people here, and it's packed.
- Well since peoples come out here forever and it's just become kind of a hangout place, you know.
- People used to hide in the bridge or else they'd fix people up that looked like people hanging from the rafters. Like somebody had hung themself. And they said that it was really scary.
- Another thing that the bridges were used for was corning. They'd go through a corn field, get a gunny sack full of corn, climb up in the rafters of the bridge. And then as cars would come by, they'd rain down corn on them.
- The covered bridges are notorious for being called kissing bridges because it seems like the boys could stop the car and sneak a quick kiss, you know, and then go on through the bridge. And I'm sure that there's several girls in Park County that could attest to that.
- My dad used to tell a story about going down there when he was younger.
- As a kid, I remember a story about a man who was camping apparently under the bridge at the West Union Bridge.
- And this man had camped out, and he had a campfire. He had a wooden leg.
- Apparently he slept too close to his fire.
- Through the night, the leg got on the fire.
- And burned his leg so bad, his wooden leg so bad, that he could no longer use it. So he'd worked his way up to the bridge, taking a piece of their bridge, another bridge.
- The man was whittling himself another leg.
- There were some boys from Rockville High School that decided to come out to the bridge one night at about 10:30 or 11 when was dark to see if this bridge really was haunted. You know, they'd heard so many things about it growing up. They parked the car on the south end of the bridge. The moon was shining so they could see through the bridge a slight bit. They walked through the bridge. They got about halfway through, and they were kind of talking and it's like, "Eh, this bridge isn't haunted." And at that point they looked up toward the north end of the bridge and they say that they saw about an eight or 10 foot Indian woman with a papoose on her back, standing in the doorway of the north end of the bridge, at the entrance. So needless to say, this scared these boys to death. And they took off running as fast as they could to get back to their car. Got in their car, went back to town, and told everybody that they came in contact with at night. So that's another little bit of folklore, and that's never been proven but these boys that are now, I'd say they're probably in their 50s, they just swear that this actually happened.
- Frank Gerard who lived just right next to this bridge all his life. He was a likely to do most anything but there had been a couple stories about Frank that I can remember well. One was, one winter there was an ice storm, and the roads were completely coated in ice. Everything was coated in ice, and Frank had decided that he was going to ice skate to Montezuma, which was about eight miles away, pretty long trek.
- And he started out and he went down over the hill, and you know you were going rather fast when you go down the hill.
- And it didn't dawn on Frank until they got real close to the bridge that sure there's ice here, but this is a covered bridge. There'll be no ice inside, and he hit those dried boards. And I guess Frank took quite a tumble through the bridge and then got back up and made his embarrassed journey the rest of the way to Montezuma.
- My family connection with the Sim Smith Bridge begins with my great, great uncle Simeon Smith, who owns most of the property around the bridge, had his name put to the bridge. They named it after him because he was the one that owned most of the property around it. My grandparents had a very small farm and my grandmother raised chickens.
- And we would put the eggs in this basket on a dish towel. So we would deliver the eggs from one house to the other. Well, it just so happened that the very last house was right around the corner from the bridge. So we would go to the bridge, take our shoes off at the edge of the water, and we'd get in there and get our feet wet. And then there was a lot of little pieces of slate that would lay in the sand. And so we would pick up the pieces of slate, and she taught me how to skip stones and skip the little pieces of slate from a small child. And she was pretty good at it. And we would count how many times it would skip. And I feel that it's kind of my duty to enjoy the bridge but as well, take care of it so other people can enjoy it. And so several times a year, I sweep the bridge, and I plant flowers on the ends of the bridge. We cut weeds, I pick up trash. Even though, you know, I'm a grown woman now, I still feel a really strong connection to the bridge. I still feel that it's my bridge because my grandmother always told me, you know, "This is our bridge. This is our family heritage." It's been in my family for so long. I love it so. I spent so much time down here, it's just part of my childhood. I just can't let it go.
♪ Just to sit among the sycamores and leave the rush behind ♪
♪ To cross those covered bridges and go back away in time. ♪
♪ There's a peace and warmth of home around me ♪
♪ As I walk along ♪
♪ There is a love in the air, you can feel everywhere ♪
♪ And you're never really there alone ♪
♪ Indiana and that's my home ♪
♪ It's been good to me and mine ♪
♪ And all the places that I roam ♪
♪ Indiana, those country roads ♪
♪ Are singing about taken them home ♪
♪ But it's back to you they'll take me when I'm gone ♪
♪ Indiana, that's my home ♪
♪ It's been good to me and mine ♪
