(Editor’s note: This is the second of three articles contributed by McGuffey Museum and Smith History Library on the rich history connected with the proposed Mill Race Preserve on Morning Sun Road.)

Covered bridges, popularized by novels, movies and Norman Rockwell paintings, have become such an iconic part of the American landscape that across Ohio new wooden bridges are being constructed. Just this year, in Preble County north of Hueston Woods, a striking new covered bridge became a local tourist destination.

Covered bridges are practical since the roof shields the truss and flooring from moisture and deterioration. The biggest danger to covered bridges then and now was not rot, but arson and flooding. As a result many Ohio counties by the 1870s turned to iron for new bridges. Only about 140 historic covered bridges remain in the state today.

During much of the 19th and early 20th centuries there were four covered bridges in Oxford Twp., but only one remains today. The Three Valley Conservation Trust is working to make it possible for the public to use this last covered bridge as part of a trail leading through a nature wildlifepreserve. Located at the end of Corso Road just north of Oxford, this remaining bridge was built across the Four Mile Creek in 1868-69 by the same builders who constructed a bridge over the Great Miami River at Trenton.

Originally, the bridge it was a single span of 209 feet, but it soon was modified with a central pier underneath for additional support. For many years, because it was built at the same time that James Pugh purchased the nearby mill, it was known as the Pugh’s Mill Bridge. After Pugh sold the milling business, the bridge took on the name Black Bridge, presumably because another covered bridge, painted a lighter color, was called the White Bridge.

By the early 1950s, the county engineer was planning to replace the old wood bridge with a modern concrete one, but Oxford citizens lobbied to save the bridge from being removed. To do this required re-routing Morning Sun Road a short distance to the east and making the old Morning Sun Road dead-end at the bridge. The cut-off section later was named Corso Road.

The Oxford Museum Association undertook the task of maintaining the covered bridge with projects like re-roofing it in the 1970s and completely restoring it in the 1990s. In 1975 the bridge was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2001 it received an Ohio Historical Marker. For most of the last 60 years, visitors could walk on the bridge from the south end, but the north end of the bridge was barricaded with a high wire fence to prevent trespassing on the private property beyond.

A different 19th-century covered bridge in Oxford Twp. was known as the White Bridge. It was built to span the Four Mile Creek east of Oxford on what then was known as the Darrtown Pike.

The bridge crossed the creek just north of what now is Trenton-Oxford Road (Ohio 73). It was built in 1872, and according to one story it was weakened a few years later when a fallen tree lodged against it in during a flood. Despite its condition, it was used until 1912 when it was replaced with a metal bridge. During later road improvements, Ohio 73 passed south of where the covered bridge stood, but old foundation remnants still can be seen in the creek.

The third bridge crossed Indian Creek west of Oxford on Fairfield Road — so named because it once led to Fairfield, Ind., a town later covered by Brookville Lake.

This covered bridge, a 120-foot Wernweg truss, was built prior to 1873 and may have been moved from another site. Located near the Indiana state line, this bridge also was saved from demolition by the actions of concerned citizens. It was dismantled in 1966 and later re-assembled in Governor Bebb Pioneer Village in southern Butler County, where visitors can walk across it as they enter the MetroPark.

A fourth covered bridge crossed Indian Creek on Brookville Road in southwest Oxford Twp. Little is known about it except that it survived into the early years of the 20th century before it, too, was replaced in 1927.

Today, almost a century and a half after the Black Bridge was constructed, it remains the last covered bridge in Oxford Twp. and the only covered bridge in Butler County that still is in its original location.

Should plans for the Mill Race Preserve come to fruition — if the Three Valley Conservation Trust and MetroParks succeed in their its fundraising — an earthen ramp could be built at the north end of the bridge to allow enable hikers, walkers and joggers to access the adjacent millrace and natural area.