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Kaufman Distillery 1857
The 1857 Kauffman's Distillery Covered Bridge or Sporting Hill Bridge is a covered bridge that spans Chiques Creek in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Lancaster County has the most covered bridges per county in Pennsylvania with 29 covered bridges.
A county-owned and maintained bridge, its official designation is the Big Chiques #1 Bridge. (Chiques Creek was known as Chickies Creek until 2002.
The bridge has a single-span, wooden, double Burr arch trusses design with the addition of steel hanger rods. The deck is made from oak planks. The bridge is painted red, the traditional color of Lancaster County Covered Bridges, on both the inside and outside. Both approaches to the bridge are painted in the traditional white color. It is the second historic covered bridge on Big Chiques Creek. The bridge was originally built in 1857 and named for the nearby Kauffman’s Distillery Mill, which operated in the 1800s. At that time, Kauffman’s was one of 130 distilleries in Lancaster County alone. It was originally built at a cost of $1,185 by James C. Carpenter, one of nine covered bridges known to have been built by Mr. Carpenter. In 1874 the bridge was rebuilt by Elias McMellen at a cost of $1,620.
Length of largest span: 84 ft.
Total length: 91.9 ft.
Deck width: 13.1 ft.
Vertical clearance above deck: 11.4 ft.
Of the 1,500 covered bridges that once stood in the state of Pennsylvania, as of 2019, approximately 200 remain.
Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on December 11, 1980.
Located at: N40 08.89 W76 24.59 - WGCB #38-36-32
Photographed in July of 2019.