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:
“Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.”
—Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
“Home! Yes! she would see Trafalgar Square, again; and Nelson on his plinth; and Chelsea Bridge as it dissolved into the Thames at twilight ... and St. Paul’s, the single Amazon breast of her beloved native city.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)