Gudgeonville Covered Bridge

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The Gudgeonville Covered Bridge is a 84-foot (25.6 m) long Multiple King-post Truss covered bridge over Elk Creek in Girard Township, Erie County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It was built in 1868 and was listed on the National Register of Historical Places on 17 September 1980. [3]

It is the oldest of the three remaining covered bridges in Erie County. The bridge structure's sufficiency rating on the Federal Highway Administration National Bridge Inventory was only 14.6 percent and its condition was deemed "basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action".

The most likely origin of the name was that it was taken from a now vanished community near where the bridge is located that was called "Gudgeonville. Although the source for the root,"gudgeon", is a mystery, it may have arose from the wagon part of the same name [4] or from the small fish and minnows in the creek below the bridge that are called gudgeons.[5]

One explanation is that a foundry was located in the valley whose speciality was making gudgeons. Another explanation was that there was a saw mill in the valley. A stranger asked the saw miller one day, "What is the name of this beautiful place?" The place had no name, but the miller was looking at the bearing of the water wheel when the traveler asked the question, and the miller answered him with "Gudgeonville."[citation needed] A popular explanation for the origin of the name is that the donkey that supposedly died on the bridge was named "Gudgeon.

Superstition surrounds the bridge as locals believe the bridge to be haunted. The ghosts of children who have fallen off the cliff that flanks one side of the bridge are said to have been seen there.[4] The unexplained sound of hooves on wood coming from the bridge can sometimes be heard,[4] often accompanied by braying.[6] One story is that a donkey was beaten to death on the bridge by its drunken owner because it refused to cross the bridge.[4][6] Other stories involve a donkey that had a heart attack from being spooked by a calliope on a barge going beneath the bridge[6] or that broke its leg one night on the bridge and had to be put down.