Back in February, I made a day trip across northwest Indiana to visit a group of notable bridges. The route covered a surprising range of engineering and history, from an endangered rural truss and a relocated covered bridge to the heavy industrial crossings of East Chicago and, finally, a rare railroad swing bridge at Michigan City. It made for a long but rewarding day.
I began at the State Line Bridge, an endangered Pennsylvania through truss that once carried State Line Road over the Kankakee River at the boundary of Kankakee County, Illinois, and Lake and Newton counties, Indiana. After sitting closed for decades because of structural deterioration, the bridge now stands in a kind of limbo, awaiting disassembly and, most likely, eventual reconstruction on a trail in a park.
The State Line Bridge itself dates to about 1900, though it did not always stand at its present site. It originally crossed the Kankakee River near what is now State Route 17 by Sun River Terrace and was moved to its current location in 1924. Even in its deteriorated state, it remained an impressive survivor from the era of pin-connected highway trusses.
From there, I drove east to Crown Point to visit the Milroy Covered Bridge, also known as the Shelhorn Covered Bridge, at the Lake County Fairgrounds. Compared with the industrial scale of some of the other bridges on the trip, this one offered a quieter and more traditional stop.
Built in 1878 by Archibald M. Kennedy, the Milroy Covered Bridge originally stood near Milroy in Rush County, where it crossed the Little Flatrock River near the Fred Shelhorn farm. In 1933, it was relocated to Crown Point, where it still carries a fairgrounds roadway today. Its move helped preserve a nineteenth-century covered bridge that otherwise might not have survived.
The day then shifted into the industrial heart of northwest Indiana at East Chicago, where I visited Indiana Harbor Canal Bridge No. 631. This railroad bridge carries the Whiting Branch of the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway over the Indiana Harbor Canal, a waterway built to connect the Grand Calumet River with Lake Michigan and support the region’s steel and petroleum industries.
Construction of the canal began in 1901 as part of the industrial transformation of the Calumet region. Although private interests initially advanced the project, the federal government took over improvements in 1910 and developed a deep harbor and navigation channel. The bridge itself, a Warren through truss linked to a single-leaf bascule span, was built in 1913 by the Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge Company. It remains one of the more distinctive railroad crossings over the canal.
Just nearby is the Dickey Road Bridge, another movable crossing over the Indiana Harbor Canal. The original bridge at this site was a 360-foot, two-leaf all-riveted bascule bridge completed in 1917 and designed by the Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge Company. It was later renovated more than once, but by the late twentieth century, it had been slated for replacement.
The modern Dickey Road Bridge emerged from a long and somewhat tangled reconstruction process. Dickey Road had once been part of State Route 912, but after the roadway was reassigned, a dispute developed over who would be responsible for operating and maintaining the new bridge. Because the span required constant staffing and carried significant annual operating costs, East Chicago, Lake County, and the state became entangled in an argument that delayed its opening. Although an agreement was reached in late 1992, the replacement Dickey Road Bridge did not fully open until 1993. The present structure is a plate-girder, double-leaf bascule with steel-stringer approaches.
I continued to the Cline Avenue Bridge, a crossing with a much newer appearance but a far more troubled history than it first suggests. The original bridge was part of the Cline Avenue freeway project, a 5.7-mile expressway begun in 1979 that extended from the Indiana Toll Road southward through the industrial corridor.
During construction, the project became the site of one of Indiana’s deadliest bridge disasters. On April 15, 1982, a ramp under construction near the canal collapsed during concrete pouring operations, killing fourteen workers. Investigators later identified multiple failures involving the shoring system and construction details. Even so, the expressway project continued, and the original canal bridge opened with the extension in 1983.
That first Cline Avenue Bridge remained in service until 2009, when extensive corrosion forced its closure. It was eventually replaced through a public-private partnership, and the present tolled Cline Avenue Bridge opened on December 23, 2020.
By evening, I had made it to Michigan City, where I caught the Trail Creek Swing Bridge in fading light. It was a fitting final stop. Unlike the highway and canal bridges visited earlier in the day, this one is the only surviving bridge of its type in Indiana.
The rail line itself developed as part of Michigan Central’s westward push toward Chicago in the mid-nineteenth century. The present bridge was built around 1905 as a replacement for an earlier crossing. Structurally, it is a Warren swing through truss, a design that reflected changing engineering practice in the early twentieth century. Today, it remains in active railroad service under Norfolk Southern and also carries Amtrak’s Wolverine trains across Trail Creek.
Taken together, the trip offered a strong cross-section of northwest Indiana bridge history. In a single day, it was possible to see a threatened pin-connected truss, a relocated covered bridge, early-twentieth-century canal bascules, a modern replacement highway crossing, and a rare swing bridge still in operation. Few regions compress so much transportation history into such a short distance.