Skip to main content

McGees Mills Covered Bridge - Mahaffey, Pennsylvania

Image
By

 

 


Built in 1873 in Mahaffey, Pennsylvania, the McGees Mills Covered Bridge is the last remaining covered bridge that crosses the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. It is also the only remaining covered bridge in Clearfield County and one of a handful along the US 219 corridor in any state the highway goes through. The McGees Mills Covered Bridge was built by Thomas A. McGee, who received an appropriation of $1,500 from the Clearfield County Commissioners to construct a replacement for a bridge spanning the West Branch of the Susquehanna River that was destroyed by a flood during the winter of 1872-1873. The 116 foot long single span Burr arch truss bridge has been protected for generations by its gabled roof, with $175 worth in local hand hewed white pine timbers having been used in its construction.

Under the bridge, thousands of river rafts loaded with timber floated the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, with the last load passing under the bridge in 1938. These rafts of timber helped build a nation, and the covered bridge bore witness to this. Major repairs were made to the McGees Mills Covered Bridge following a collapse of the historical structure on March 14, 1994. The tremendous weight of heavy snow and ice during the winter of 1993-94 caused the bridge to collapse. The bridge has been extensively reinforced with heavy steel mending plates at the joints of the Burr arches, and angle irons and mending plates on the other wooden timbers, and a five foot high wall of laminated two by twelve inch planks banded together with steel plates that run the entire length of the bridge. This was one of the most extensive reinforced bridges in all of Pennsylvania. In 2020, the Clearfield County Commissioners awarded a bid to repair the roof on the McGees Mills Covered Bridge to 768-Roof of Clearfield, Pennsylvania for $119,140, plus an additional $8,800 if masonry repointing is needed.

Today, you can passively enjoy the covered bridge in a number of ways. There is a small pullout to park so you can explore the bridge. There is also a picnic area next to the bridge so you can enjoy views of the covered bridge as well. The McGees Mills Covered Bridge is found right off of US 219 on Covered Bridge Road in Mahaffey, so if you are in the area, it is a quick detour off of the main road and a beautiful setting to spend some time in.








How to Get There:



Sources and Links:
Clearfield County - McGees Covered Bridge
Bridgehunter.com - McGee's Mills Covered Bridge 38-17-01
Pennsylvania Covered Bridges - McGee's Mill Covered Bridge
The Progress - Commissioners approve repairs to two historic bridges (May 12, 2020)


Update Log:
May 12, 2021 - Crossposted to Quintessential Pennsylvania: http://quintessentialpa.blogspot.com/2021/05/mcgees-mills-covered-bridge.html
Labels:
Location: McGees Mills Covered Bridge, Covered Bridge Rd, Mahaffey, PA 15757, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third
Post a Comment
Read more