HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Kidd's Mill Covered Bridge

Pymatuning Township, Mercer County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

Built in 1868, spanning the Shenango River. The only remaining bridge in Pennsylvania with an all-wooden truss design patented by Robert Smith of Tippecanoe City, Ohio. The last historic covered bridge in Mercer County, extending 120 feet in length and restored in 1990.

Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Story

Built in 1868 across the Shenango River, Kidd's Mill Covered Bridge is the last historic covered bridge left standing in Mercer County. It is prized as the only surviving Pennsylvania bridge using the all-wooden truss design patented by Robert Smith of Tippecanoe City, Ohio—a distinctive engineering pattern from the golden age of American covered bridges. Stretching 120 feet, it was carefully restored in 1990.

Why it matters

The bridge preserves a rare regional truss design from the era when covered wooden bridges knit together America's rural crossings and roads.

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Related people

  • · Robert Smith

Themes & tags

TransportationCovered BridgesBridge

Nearby & related markers

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