Clarkson–Legg Covered Bridge, Wooden covered bridge in Cullman County, Alabama, United States
The Clarkson–Legg Covered Bridge is a 270-foot wooden Town lattice truss bridge over Crooked Creek, carried on four spans. Its timber members are pinned in a diagonal lattice, and the structure is roofed and sided to protect the deck. Some sources give its length as 250 feet. It stands in Clarkson Covered Bridge Park, about 8 miles west of Cullman.
James W. Legg, a local mail carrier on whose land Crooked Creek ran, had the bridge built in 1904 for $1,500 and supplied much of the timber; it was first called the Legg Covered Bridge. A 1921 flood carried away half the structure, but most pieces were recovered downstream and Cullman County hired a contractor to rebuild it the next year, again for $1,500. It carried motor traffic until a concrete bypass opened in 1962, and the county restored it in 1975 for the American Bicentennial.
The bridge represents early 20th-century transportation infrastructure and serves as an educational resource at Clarkson Covered Bridge Park.
The bridge sits near Bethel and can be reached by taking County Road 1043, roughly 8 miles west of Cullman. The adjacent park provides parking and basic facilities for visitors exploring the site and surrounding grounds.
Skirmishes at Crooked Creek and Hog Mountain took place on April 30, 1863, near where the bridge now stands, during Streight's Raid: Union Colonel Abel Streight's men, pursued by Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, had failed to cut the Western & Atlantic Railroad supplying Braxton Bragg's forces.
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