1867 Cabin Creek Covered Bridge near Kentucky's Lewis-Fleming County line. No longer open to vehicular traffic, this 114 ft. span bridge crossing Cabin Creek was constructed in 1867 and is one of the thirteen remaining in the state.

The lack of siding under the eaves creates a clerestory effect along the entire length. Around 1914, Louis Bower reinforced the Burr truss structure by adding an arch on either side, requiring the addition of skew backs where the arch meets the abutments.

Numerous dates have been listed over several decades for the construction of the Cabin Creek Bridge. Fiscal Court records quoted by Rev. O. G Ragan in his History of Lewis County, Kentucky. Press of Jennings and Graham, 1912, list 1869 as the date of the charter of the Cabin Creek Turnpike; 1870 as the date in which the turnpike company was authorized to cross Cabin Creek "at William Henderson's;" and 1871 as the date of construction of the bridge. The circa 1914 Bower reconstruction has been confirmed through an announcement in the Maysville Evening Bulletin to have begun in September 1907.

The builder of the Cabin Creek Bridge was generally and officially stated as unknown for decades. In recent years, it has been attributed to both Jacob Bower and William Henderson - then owner of adjacent property. The assertion that Henderson constructed the bridge is based upon a letter written in the 1970s to the Vanceburg newspaper disputing a statement made in an article that the bridge was constructed by Mackey Hughes. The author of the letter was Ms. Birdie Henderson, the great-great-granddaughter of William Henderson. It has been handed down through several generations of the Henderson family that Mr. Henderson was the builder of the bridge. From Fiscal Court records transcribed in Ragan, the builder of the bridge was "a Mr. Bryant of Ohio." "Mr. Bryant" was in all likelihood Josiah Bryant, a noted covered bridge builder from Mt. Orab in Brown County, Ohio. The structural and empirical details of several Ohio-covered bridges confirmed to have been built by Bryant validate this contemporaneous documentation.

Cabin Creek is NOT a Burr truss. The definition of it and several other bridges as a "Burr truss" was proposed by Vernon White in a paper he wrote titled "A Treatise on the Burr Family of Trusses." Vernon had determined that the "multiple kingpost" truss was an unchurched variation of the Burr and this information has been used frequently to describe these trusses in Kentucky. Vernon was a sociologist and had no formal training in structure. His treatise is generally accepted as flawed and not well-researched.

The specific improvement that Burr advanced in bridge design was to place the roadway between the arches as opposed to over them. As the triangle is the most sturdy structure in engineering, the use of the simple multiple kingposts was sensible in stiffening the arch.

Cabin Creek was closed to vehicular traffic in 1983 and was restored by Arnold M. Graton Associates of Ashland, New Hampshire, 2012–2014.

Located at:  N38 36.564    W83 37.274     -     WGCB #17-68-03

Photographed in September 2021.