Motorists heading south from St. Louis toward Hillsboro may not realize when they cross Sandy Creek on State Route 21 that located just a short distance downstream is one of Missouri’s last remaining covered bridges. Once fairly numerous, the covered bridges still standing numbered only eleven by 1942.
The decline continued until 1967, when the Missouri legislature authorized the state park system to preserve the four remaining structures. Sandy Creek Covered Bridge, originally built in 1872, still carried traffic until 1984. The bridge was constructed of white pine by John Hathaway Morse for $2,000. The 76-foot-long structure followed the Howe truss design and reportedly could handle up to seventy tons. Fourteen years after it opened, it was destroyed during spring floods. But Henry Steffin was able to salvage about half the original timbers and rebuild the bridge for only $889.
After another flood in 1940, the wooden piers were replaced with concrete supports. And once again in 1952, the bridge was renovated, this time by the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce, who protected it with a corrugated metal roof and placed a historical marker on it. Following restoration by the park division in 1984, the barn-red bridge now has a wood shingle roof as it did originally
The bridge is located on the old Hillsboro-Lemay Ferry Road. Before bridges, ferries were often used in Missouri, especially on the larger streams, and some of the first bridges were often built by ferrymen as toll bridges. Although guidelines for bridge construction were included in many of the early road laws, bridge building didn’t really catch on until the state’s first public bridge code was established in 1825. The code required that any structure costing more than $25 be built by the county court. By the mid-1840s, most of the state had caught bridge-building fever. The first covered bridge was reportedly a span built by Travis Burroughs in 1851 across Perche Creek in Boone County on a road that followed the old Boone’s Lick Trail.
Although several structural designs were popular, by far the most successful was the Howe truss, which is represented in three of the four covered bridges still standing in Missouri—Burfordville at Bollinger Mill in Cape Girardeau County, Locust Creek in Linn County, and Sandy Creek. The design was patented in 1840 by William Howe, whose nephew Elias made substantial advances to the sewing machine with his 1845 model.
The essential feature of the Howe truss was its use of metal verticals functioning as tension members and wooden diagonals functioning as compression members. With the iron truss rods, Howe Truss bridges are often considered to be transitional from wood to iron. But covered bridges were practical as well as quaint; the addition of roof and sides served to protect the structural timbers from the elements.
The Sandy Creek site includes about two hundred acres of undeveloped land adjoining the bridge. Sandstone outcroppings have formed glades and rocky barrens with characteristic dryland flora and fauna. Part of the site runs about a mile south of the creek to a local prominence called Fort Hill. The conical little hill crowned by an escarpment displays a small prairie glade typical of the kind found in this eastern Ozark Border region of Washington and Jefferson Counties. In early May, the glade on Fort Hill is given to displays of purple and gold: on close inspection, the purple really comes from the pale violet petals of the glade coneflower and from the lavender bells of Fremont’s leather flower, while the gold turns out to be sand tickseed.
No formal trail system leads into the Fort Hill area of the site, but visitors are encouraged to explore it on short hikes of their own. With a lunch in the creek-side picnic area, a stroll through the old bridge, and a hike into the woods, this small historic site can provide all the requirements for whiling away a lazy afternoon.
*Sandy Creek takes its name from the St. Peter sandstone exposed along the south-facing slopes of a long ridge north of the creek, known locally as Sandy Ridge or Sand Ridge.
Feature photo, Glade coneflowers and coreopsis adorn a glade on nearby Fort Hill, courtesy of Missouri State Parks.
SANDY CREEK COVERED BRIDGE STATE HISTORIC SITE • OLD LEMAY FERRY ROAD, GOLDMAN
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