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Monroe County To Rebuild Covered Bridge

Last updated on Friday, June 12, 2015

(BLOOMINGTON) - Monroe County officials are using an award from the National Historic Covered Bridge Preservation Program received in 2008 to pay for rehabilitation and re-erection of the Cedar Ford Covered Bridge.

The Herald Times reports that Cedar Ford will be the first covered bridge in the county in four decades - the last one, Williams bridge, burned in what was likely arson on June 29, 1976.

The Cedar Ford Covered Bridge, originally built in 1885 by the Kennedy Brothers, spanned the Little Blue River north of Shelbyville until 1975, when it was dismantled and stored to make way for a new bridge.

The bridge, still in pieces, currently is sitting in a turkey-barn-turned-storage-space in Greene County.

Jim Barker, a project manager with VS Engineering, which is doing the restoration and re-erection work, said the bridge, once completed, will sit very close to the location of Monroe County's last covered bridge - Williams Bridge - that carried North Maple Grove Road traffic over Bean Blossom Creek for nearly 105 years. It was in use until the 1960s, when the county started talking about moving it. The county spent $20,000 restoring it, just before a fire destroyed it.

The new bridge will be built just up the creek from where the original Williams bridge was located.

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