From the sign at the bridge: "Most local historians agree that a farmer named J.D. Dunn built the bridge. The Kankakee River bisected his thousand acres of farmland, and he needed the bridge to reach his field."
From the Historic Bridges site: (
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"According to James Cooper's Iron Monuments book, which documents Indiana's historic bridges, there have been rumors that the Dunn's Bridge's trussed arch came from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition Ferris Wheel. This claim is not well backed up, especially considering that the arches are not concentric. Some have also claimed the bridge came from a 1904 Indiana Building at the St. Louis World Fair. This however does not seem as likely. Rather, the bridge may have come from some other 1893 World Columbian Exposition structure. There were other buildings besides the Ferris Wheel in the 1893 Columbian Exposition from which the trusses of this arch bridge could have originated from.
The steel through arch and the two I beam approaches to the north sit upon concrete abutments, wingwalls, and piers. The arches are framed from two pairs of curved angles, each pair riveted and then the pairs latticed with angles about 3' apart. Two six-panel, two three-panel, and two six-panel sections are bolted together to compose an arch. Five eyebars hang from the arch and are attached to the floor-beams. The two most central floor-beams are manufactured as open and latticed rectangular girders; the others are I beams. They carry the asphalt-over-timber deck. The bridge does not have a lower chord."
Wikipedia has additional documentation: (
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"The bridge is rumored to be built at least partially from materials obtained from the original Ferris wheel at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The current maintainers of the bridge, the Porter County Parks Department, state only that it is "built from parts of a building from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair." Upon a cursory look at the lack of parallelness of the tops of the arches (flattening), the Ferris Wheel heritage is impossible. More likely, the arches may have been salvaged from a building at that exposition and the general similarity to a wheel was noted and the misinformation took root as legend.
There are four small sections, two at each end, that appear to be ornamental. These smaller sections have the right radius for a Ferris wheel. The radius and arch shape match that of Machinery Hall or Electricity Hall from the Exposition. Machinery Hall burned and the steel was sold as scrap at about the time the bridge was built.
The bridge was renovated in 2003, winning a state award for the engineering work involved."
From Porter County's website: (
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"The origin of Dunn's Bridge County Park has become the stuff of legend. Most Historians agree that the bridge was built by a farmer named J.D. Dunn, whose property was bisected by the Kankakee River. But beyond that, the facts are a bit murky. Some say the bridge was built in the mid-1890s using steel beams salvaged from the 1893 Colombian World Fair in Chicago. Others contend the bridge was built using pieces of the original Ferris Wheel, which premiered at the fair and was dismantled after the 1904 Worlds Fair.
Porter County Parks and Recreation purchased the 180-foot-long bridge and surrounding three acres in 1994, and undertook the award-winning restoration that helped land the bridge on the National Register of Historic Places. The bridge offers the only designated public access to the Kankakee River in Porter County, allowing fishermen and paddlers to launch their boat here and enjoy the beautify natural surroundings. Those who enjoy fishing can cast for walleye, bass, crappie, bluegill and Northern Pike, among others. "
There's a boat launch at the bridge, and plenty of mosquitoes!