Page 20 - AAA Magazine – AAA Ohio Auto Club – September 2018

Playing in
Lancaster,
County, PA
By John T. Garcia
W hen Robert James Waller’s “The Bridges of Madison County” was released in 1992, it sparked a resurgence
in the interest in covered bridges. In the book, set in the 1960s, National Geographic photographer Robert
Kincaid visits Madison County, Iowa, to document the covered bridges of the area. He ends up having an affair with a married mother whose husband and children are off at the state fair.
But if Kincaid had visited Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, instead, he wouldn’t have had time for an affair since it is home to four times as many covered bridges as Madison County, Iowa.
In fact, Pennsylvania leads the nation with 213 covered bridges with Ohio coming in second with 148, according to the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges. And Lancaster County is home to 27 of them. While nature and the elements have destroyed many bridges over time, others have been protected because they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or are owned by the local authorities because the bridge is key to the area’s transportation.
Discover Lancaster, a marketing group for the area, has even created five different driving tours so that you see many of these architectural beauties. On the Northern Amish Countryside drive,
you will see the Bitzer’s Mill Covered Bridge, the oldest bridge in
the county, having been built in 1846, and the Bucher’s Mill Covered Bridge, which, at 73 feet, is the second-shortest bridge open to traffic in the county. At the other end of the spectrum, on the Lititz and Its Countryside drive, you will cross the Hunsecker’s Mill Covered Bridge, which at 180 feet is the longest single-span bridge in the county.
To find all the drives for the more than two dozen bridges, check out discoverlancaster.com/activities/pa-covered-bridges.asp.
For a unique tour of the covered bridges, Strasburg Scooters (less than 10 miles outside of Lancaster) offers guided covered- bridge tours of Pennsylvania Dutch Country daily from March through November. You can tour on either a single- or double-seat, two-wheeled scooter or in a two-seat, three-wheeled Scoot Coupe.
For a unique tour of the covered bridges, Strasburg Scooters offers guided covered-bridge tours of Pennsylvania Dutch Country daily from March through November.
18 | AAA MAGAZINE
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