Natural Bridge Park near Natural Bridge, Alabama, is park in Winston County, Alabama, that has been open since 1954. The current owners are Jim and Barbara Denton.
The park includes picnic accommodations, an artesian well which supplies drinking fountains, a gift shop featuring hand-crafted items, 27 varieties of fern, a variety of hemlock which dates back to the Ice Age and a 30 minute nature trail.
The Natural Bridge formation is 60 ft (18.3 m) high, 148 feet (45 m) long, and composed of sandstone and iron ore. This bridge is the longest natural bridge east of the Rocky Mountains in North America.
Downhill from the natural bridge is an outcropping of rock, presenting the image of a large American Indian head, in the right profile view, similar to that of an old American Indian Head nickel (see photo). The stone image is just over 15 feet (4.6 m) high.
As of 2002, tourists paid $2.50 to enter the park. Because of insurance concerns, visitors are not allowed to walk over the bridge, but instead, they view it while walking underneath.
NOTE: Cost to enter park is still $2.50 as of October 2012. According to park brochure, park is open "from 8:00am until around sunset seven days a week."
Famous quotes containing the words natural, bridge and/or park:
“I pity the men whose natural pleasures are burthens, and who fly from joy ... as if it was really an evil in itself.... Poor unfortunate creature that he is! as if the causes of anguish in the heart were not enow—but he must fill up the measure, with those of caprice; and not only walk in a vain shadow,—but disquiet himself in vain too.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it’s intimate and psychological—resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Mrs. Mirvan says we are not to walk in [St. James’s] Park again next Sunday ... because there is better company in Kensington Gardens; but really, if you had seen how every body was dressed, you would not think that possible.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)