The Bunker Hill Covered Bridge is one of two covered bridges left in North Carolina, (the other being the Pisgah Covered Bridge in Randolph County), and is possibly the last wooden bridge in the United States with Haupt truss construction. It was built in 1895 by Andrew Loretz Ramsour (1817–1906) in Claremont, North Carolina, and crosses Lyle Creek.

The project to build the bridge was started in 1894 when Catawba County Commissioners requested nearby owners of the Bunker Hill Farm to build and maintain a bridge that would cross Lyle Creek on the old Island Ford Road (a former Native American trail). According to local archives, Ramsour found the Haupt truss design in a book. Since the bridge was originally constructed as an open span, its 91-foot-long roof wasn't added until 1900, and in 1921, its original wooden shingle roof was replaced with a tin roof.

Haupt’s improved lattice truss bridge was a response to Ithiel Town’s 1820 and 1835 patents for the plank lattice timber truss. Haupt used the analytical methods he developed in the 1840s to design a more efficient lattice truss that consisted of web members positioned only at locations that required support. Redundant members were removed, resulting in the improved lattice truss as described in his book General Theory of Bridge Construction published in 1851.

The Bunker Hill Covered Bridge has significant associations not only with the Civil War, through Haupt, but also with the American Revolution. Of the Island Ford Road, on which the bridge rests, Dr. J. E. Hodges, President of the Catawba County Historical Association in the 1950s, writes in 1959 that following the Battle of Cowpens in 1781, General Morgan detached 531 British prisoners under the guard of Colonel William Washington’s dragoons and Colonel Charles McDowell over the Island Ford Road. The men crossed Lyle’s Creek at the Bunker Hill Ford on their way to the Island Ford of the Catawba River, where they were received by the Commissary of Prisoners and conveyed to the interior of Virginia.

The bridge was owned by the Bolick family until 1985 when they donated it to the Catawba County Historical Association, which restored it in 1994.

The bridge was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2001 and is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Located at:  N35 43.291   W81 06.914      -     WGCB #33-18-01

Photographed in the fall of 2021

Submitted by Stephen Tindall of Fox Den, Delaware.