History & local legend
The old Covert’s Crossing Bridge carried Covert Road across the Mahoning River in Lawrence County. Its narrow steel frame and wooden deck became the setting for a midnight ghost story: people said a driver who stopped on the bridge and extinguished the headlights would see an apparition.
One version described a girl in a white prom dress. She was said to have died on her way home when her car went off the bridge during a storm. Another version made the ghost a bride whose horse-drawn wedding buggy was struck by a car. In that telling, she was decapitated and her groom disappeared into the river.
The original one-lane bridge was dismantled in 2003. Historic photographs preserve its plank roadway and steel portals.
Sources
- Jeff Bales Jr., Lawrence County Memoirs, local bridge history, folklore variants and photographs
- Walt Stratton, local field guide, 2015, bride and prom-dress versions
- Historic American Engineering Record, Coverts Crossing Bridge, original survey and photographs
- PennDOT bridge inventory, replacement crossing 22564
