Union Covered Bridge State Historic Site in Monroe County, Missouri, is maintained by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources as a state historic site to preserve the Union covered bridge. The bridge was built in 1871 across the Elk Fork of the Salt River as a link in the Paris-to-Fayette road. Its name comes from the nearby Union Church. In 1968 a partial restoration was completed using materials from the Mexico Covered Bridge which was destroyed the year before by flood waters. In 1970 the Union bridge was closed after structural timbers were damaged by overweight trucks. A total restoration was completed in 1988. The bridge was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
The bridge is a 120 foot (36.6 m) long Burr Arch span that is 17 feet 6 inches (5.3 m) wide and 12 feet high (3.7 m). Joseph C. Elliot built the bridge in 1871 from local oak. It is sided in clapboard and uses wood shingles. Two earlier uncovered bridges at this site were replaced in turn due to deterioration.
Some siding was removed as an emergency measure in 2008 when the bridge was threatened by severe flooding. Removal of the lowest siding allowed the stream to flow freely through the understructure of the bridge, thus sparing it the full force of the current. The bridge was saved, but the removed siding is still missing while funds for repair are sought.
Famous quotes containing the words union, covered, bridge, state, historic and/or site:
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.”
—Alice Meynell (1847–1922)
“Oh, who will now be able to relate how Pantagruel behaved in face of these three hundred giants! Oh my muse, my Calliope, my Thalie, inspire me now, restore my spirits, because here is the ass’s bridge of logic, here is the pitfall, here is the difficulty of being able to describe the horrible battle undertaken.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“The almost unexplored Everglades lay close by and with a half- hour’s start a man who knew the country was safe from pursuit. As one man cheerfully confided ..., ‘A boat don’t leave no trail, stranger.’”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is. When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)