Hurried travelers on MD 272 zoom past this simple relic, which sits over Northeast Creek just east of the busy highway. At 119 feet, Gilpin’s Falls Bridge is the longest remaining wooden covered bridge in the state. Built near the site of several former mills, it is a type known as a Burr arch, the support system patented in 1817 by the Connecticut bridge builder Theodore Burr, who added an arch to triangular trusses to make a bridge stronger. Inside its sheltering clapboard walls, the arched timber beams, encased in multiple king-post truss, stretch from bank to bank. Gilpin’s Falls Bridge was restored after a century of use but no longer handles automobile traffic. Today it is open to pedestrians.

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