The first hole at the Parke County Golf Club is a 252-yard par 4. The tee is elevated, a bunker guards the left side of the green, and a narrow creek cuts across the fairway. In other words, it’s just your basic golf hole.
Except for the covered bridge.
“It’s quite an experience,” says Carolyn Braner, who runs the pro shop, “when you hear one of the shots banging through there.”
Welcome to Parke County, a patch of west-central Indiana that calls itself the Covered Bridge Capital of the World, and with good reason.
There are 30 of them here, down from the 40 or so of a generation ago but still enough to make it a unique concentration of the things.
Because you’re going to ask: Madison County, in Iowa, has a best-selling novel, a movie starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep, and six covered bridges. Vermont has more than a hundred, but Vermont’s a state.
Parke County has no best-selling novel, no Clint Eastwood movies and no Ben & Jerry’s. What it has is more than 800 miles of roads, including the gravel ones, and–if you count all of them–almost as many bridges as miles.
The ones we love: Thirty of those county bridges are wooden and covered and painted mostly red and are wonderfully photogenic. Most went up before pavement went down, the oldest in 1856.
Trying to find them all–even with a good map–is like your own private scavenger hunt. Few are visible from main roads, and that’s part of the fun.
The search will take you over some of the prettiest country lanes in the Midwest, some hilly and winding, some bordered by corn and soybeans–but many fringed by hardwood forest that will make you wish it were fall color season, in Parke County the best time of all.
Why are there so many here, in this place? Same reason the chicken crossed the road.
“During the last ice age,” explains Lyn Lees, of the Parke County Tourist Information Center, “when the glacier melted, it stopped right north of our county. All of that melting caused so much of a runoff of all that water that we have a lot of creeks and streams within our county.
“We had to have some way to cross all of them.”
Function aside, they represent history, and a softer time, and permanence in a world of rapid change. To those who grew up with them, they represent more than that.
Dwayne Carpenter, 57, grew up in Parke County and has lived here almost all his life. These days he farms a little and drives the horse-drawn wagon that carts visitors around Billie Creek Village, a cluster of old buildings gathered into an outdoor museum just east of Rockville.
“It was a place,” he says, “to have a little fun at Halloween time, y’know?”
As kids, he says, they’d climb into the rafters and, when a car rumbled over the timber floor of the bridge, they’d drop a dummy tied to a rope.
“Of course,” he says, “there were a lot of convertibles back then.”
And before cars . . .
“When you were courting your lady in your buggy,” says Lees, “it was a nice place to stop and steal a kiss.”
“They’re part of our heritage,” says Montezuma restaurant owner Janet Riggen, “part of our history.”
The bridges were covered mainly because covering the flooring and the interior timbers protected them from the elements–which evidently worked pretty well, given their survival rate. Lees says there was an unexpected bonus.
“When bridges were not covered, they found a lot of times the horses would balk at crossing when they could see the rushing water and hear the water underneath the bridge,” she says.
“On most of the bridges, if you look at them front-on, it kind of looks like a barn. So the horses would go right through and not have any qualms about going on the bridge.”
As with so many things, with the advent of the automobile the bridges lost some of their romance. Then, during the Eisenhower years, two things happened that would change Parke County forever.
The first, in 1956, was a letter to the editor of the Rockville Republican from a Mrs. Charles Cole, a former resident who, on a re-visit, was dismayed by the county’s dismissal of its covered bridges. According to the Rockville Sesquicentennial Review (1974), she was flummoxed as to “why we weren’t doing something to let people know we had all these covered bridges in such beautiful scenery.”
A year later, disaster struck. Floods ravaged the county–two bridges were lost to the rushing waters–and the towns, not exactly thriving even in those boom times, really struggled.
Eventually, civic leaders merged this festering notion of promoting the bridges with the disaster-inspired notion of a festival to bring in some cash. The first festival, held on a weekend that October, made a small profit.
Now, almost half a century later, the 10-day Parke County Covered Bridge Festival draws 2 million people–2 million people–every October (this year: Oct.14-23).
“You can’t believe what this county looks like during those 10 days,” says Riggen.
“It’s busy,” agrees Carpenter, “but I live 5 miles out in the country, and I can still come to town to eat every night if I want to. Just have to pick different roads, y’know?”
Says Linda Graves, who works at a hospital: “I usually take those 10 days off on vacation.” Reason? “I can’t get to work. But it’s an enjoyable time. You meet a lot of wonderful people.”
The draw, along with the bridges, is miles and miles of markets scattered all over the county. In the beginning, the rule was that anything sold at them had to be Parke County products: crafts, clothes, quilts, woodwork and food products.
“For 30 years it was thataway,” says Carpenter. “You can still find those, but then society changed and it kind of got into more flea-market stuff. Throwaway stuff.
“But for 30 years, people would make their entire living in those 10 days. Their yearly wage.”
Another factor, according to a waitress: “A lot of the people who did the crafts died off.”
The combination of cruising the flea markets, prime leaf color (no guarantees on that, but the odds are good) and those bridges is irresistible to the millions who come here every October. And there still are many Parke County folks who make it through the year in large part with what they bring in during the festival.
The rest of the year: It’s the sweet land, and the welcoming people, and the intriguing covered bridges.
The county’s only real “tourist attractions,” in the traditional sense, are Turkey Run State Park, which features rugged hiking trails, some canyons (but this is Indiana, not Utah) and wildlife, plus a hotel, pool, tennis courts and three covered bridges; and Billie Creek Village.
Billie Creek Village is derided by some locals as a “tourist trap”–but at $3.50 admission, it’s a relatively benign trap. There are good things here: some crafters, a well-equipped old-time doctor’s office, a farmstead with a petting pen, churches and commercial structures, most pre-1900, that would have been lost without it.
Here, too, is a one-room schoolhouse. On this day, at the teacher’s desk, was Mary Margaret Skelton, who attended a one-room schoolhouse very much like this one, not very far from here, and had the pictures to prove it.
One was of her 1938 graduating class. “Her name was Emily,” she told a visitor, 5-year-old Nathan Nugent of Columbus, Ind., and his parents. “I can tell you all their names . . . “
There are three covered bridges in Billie Creek Village. Always, it’s the bridges.
Small bridges, like the Phillips Covered Bridge, only 43 feet long, over Big Pond Creek. There’s Crooks Covered Bridge, three times as long, over Little Raccoon Creek. Neet Covered Bridge, over that same creek and, well, just a neat bridge.
There was Bridgeton Covered Bridge, beautiful Bridgeton Covered Bridge, a double-span (two bridges, end to end) from 1868, 245 feet long over a waterfall where kids played, next to the old mill.
Kids still play in the waterfall. The bridge is gone. Until the fire last April, there were 31 covered bridges in Parke County.
The bridge at the golf course is Catlin Covered Bridge. It was built in 1907 and brought here in 1961. Golfers playing the first hole, and the second, and the 10th and the 11th, drive their carts over Bill Diddle Creek through the Catlin Bridge.
“You know,” says the pro shop’s Carolyn Braner, “you never go through a covered bridge without kissing the one you’re with.”
Evidently, separate carts are a profit center at Parke County Golf Club …
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Population
17,329 (2,725 in Rockville, the largest town)
Claim to fame
The world’s largest concentration of antique covered bridges–30 in all–plus other antiques, crafts, flea markets, three state parks (including Turkey Run) and outstanding country drives.
Nearby
Ernie Pyle State Historic Site (Dana), Lew Wallace Study/Ben-Hur Museum (Crawfordsville), Cataract Falls (Owen County) and Indianapolis (about 75 miles).
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A WEEKEND IN PARKE COUNTY
GETTING THERE
The direct route: U.S. Highway 41 south, beginning with Lake Shore Drive to South Shore Drive, on through Hammond (slow, congested) and onward in Indiana all the way to Rockville, 25 miles northeast of Terre Haute. About 160 miles (the last 100 miles are fine); figure 3 1/2 hours. To bypass the early miles of malls, car lots and traffic lights (though the total time saved may be modest), take either Interstate Highway 65 south through upper Indiana or Interstate Highway 57 through that part of Illinois, then cut back toward U.S. 41 when the mood strikes.
STAYING THERE
Don’t expect much–a scattering of motels, inns and bed-and-breakfasts, and lots of RV campgrounds (used mainly during festivals). A sampling: In Rockville–the best base for exploring the county–the Parke Bridge Motel (from $42.50 weekends; all rates subject to change, and expect to pay more during events) is a spotless mom-and-pop near the center of town with rooms decorated according to local themes (there’s an Amish Room, a Bicycle Tour room, etc.). Don’t be fooled by the humble looks of the Covered Bridge Motel (from $50); rooms are nice, freshly remodeled, they all have microwaves and fridges, and some have stoves. Billie Creek Inn (from $89), with 30 rooms, is comfortable (like a good Best Western), has a pool and is next to the low-key theme park of the same name. Guests return year after year to the venerable (parts date to 1919) Turkey Run Inn, about 10 miles north of town in the state park, mainly because of the state park. Rooms (from $59) vary; if they describe one as “small,” believe them. Additional lodging is available in Crawfordsville, Terre Haute and Greencastle, all in neighboring counties; Indianapolis motels are an hour-plus away.
DINING THERE
What you’d expect in small-town Indiana: Chicken nuggets, burgers, tenderloins, pork chops, grilled thinnish steaks, maybe catfish, some pizza. Broasted chicken is big. A sampling: Saloon 36, near the Rockville courthouse, adds a full bar to the mix and antlered heads on the walls. It’s mostly NASCAR on the walls at the Avalon Restaurant, another bar (this one on U.S. 41) with some food–good a place as any to try the oversize breaded tenderloin, an Indiana staple (sandwich, $4). Just about every agricultural town has a place with a big table that fills early for breakfast, and in Rockville it’s the White Horse Cafe, a congenial place whose walls are covered with cowboys (including a signed Gene Autry). It’s near the Avalon. Back by the courthouse, the most pleasant dining room around is the non-smoking side of Weber’s Family Restaurant; try the fried chicken. The best thing in sleepy Montezuma, 8 miles west (on the Wabash), is Janet’s Family Restaurant, an otherwise typical country diner with a specialty worth the calories: strawberry pie, baked daily, topped with real whipped cream. Eight miles from Rockville the other way, in Bellmore, the Castaway Restaurant serves up the usual standards in the quiet side of the building, and there’s a honky-tonkish bar (same menu) on the other.
IF YOU COULD HAVE ONLY ONE MEAL
Well, a variation of that question was put to a waitress at one of the above restaurants. Her answer: “I’d go to Terre Haute.” Which says it all.
KID-FRIENDLINESS
Fair. Your fascination with the bridges won’t be shared by the kids for long, unless you let them splash in the creeks. The animals and interpreters at Billie Creek Village will entertain them a little, and there’s hiking, a nature center and canoe rides in and around Turkey Run State Park. Decent fishing too.
YOU SHOULD KNOW
Contributions to the Bridgeton Covered Bridge Replacement Fund may be sent to the Old National Bank, Box 167, Rockville, IN 47872; or First Financial Bank, Box 188, Rockville, IN 47872. Information: Bart Barnes, fund treasurer, 765-548-4095. … Hug a preservationist: If you want to see what Galena looked like before visionaries saved its Main Street, take a quick ride along Perry Street in Attica, a Wabash River town about 40 miles north of Rockville just off U.S. 41. … This year’s countywide Covered Bridge Festival runs Oct. 14-23 (always starts the second Friday in October). … With conventional lodging extremely tight within the county during the festival, Indianapolis (an hour-plus drive) becomes an attractive option. Another: Check with the tour-ism people or the Web site about staying with local folks, including–great for families–farm stays. … The festival sometimes coincides with peak fall color, which contributes to the popularity and the crush. Leaf-peepers uninterested in the flea markets and crowds would be wise to work around the festival dates. … The lights come on at Christmastime, especially in Rockville. … Admission to Billie Creek Village: $3.50. Add $1 for a horse-drawn wagon ride around the grounds. … Cost of a first-run movie at the Ritz in downtown Rockville: $5, $4 for kids, and the popcorn is fresh. The restored theater dates to 1912; for a time in the 1920s it was owned by the Ku Klux Klan, but that was another era. … Yes, there’s golf: Three courses–Parke County (nine holes), Raccoon Lake Golf Course (11 holes; they’ll explain the drill) and Turkey Run (18). None will cost you more than $30 on weekends, with cart, for 18 holes; all have nine-hole rates. … And a sign en route says there’s a memorial to Cub legend Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown somewhere in Nyesville, his hometown (northeast of Rockville). Couldn’t find it.
INFORMATION
For Parke County: Parke County Tourist Information Center, 765-569-5226; www.coveredbridges.com. For TurkeyRunStatePark:765-597-2635;www.in.g ov/dnr/parklake/properties/park(underscore)turkeyrun.html (the official Web site) or www.turkeyrunstatepark.com (unofficial, but useful).
— Alan Solomon
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asolomon@tribune.com
For previous stories with additional photos and interviews: chicagotribune.com/midwestweekends
