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Macton or Broad Creek Covered Bridge

COUNTY WORLD GUIDE # CROSSES TRUSS SPANS LENGTH BUILT GONE
Harford MD-12-03x Broad Creek Unk 1 39' Unk Late 1930s to early 1940s
There is considerable confusion about the location of Macton Covered Bridge, at Macton, about two miles north of Dublin. Portals, Volume 4, No. 4, December 1964, the official magazine of the Theodore Burr Covered Bridge Society of Pennsylvania, listed the bridge as across Broad Creek, collapsed in the 1930s. Richard Sanders Allen, founder of the National Society for The Preservation of Covered Bridges also listed the bridge as crossing Broad Creek. The Baltimore Sunpapers reported in 1937 that the Macton Bridge resides "on private property on the road that leads from Dublin to Cardiff." (It also mentions that there was once a plan for Baltimore City to purchase the bridge in the early 1930s with intentions that it would be moved and preserved in a park, but the project did not materialize.)
C. Milton Wright, in his book Our Harford Heritage, mentions the Macton Bridge as one of the last to disappear in Harford County:¹
Among the last to disappear were the Deer Creek bridges at Wiley's Mill near Norrisville, Red Bridge near Eden Mill, Wilson's Bridge near Harmony Church, and the Macton Bridge over Broad Creek.
Traveling east on Macton Road, it changes to Robinson Mill Road at the intersection with Whiteford Road. About one-half mile east of the intersection, Robinson's Mill road crosses Broad Creek. This could possibly be the location of Macton Bridge.
Authors Jack Shagena, Jr., and Henry Peden, Jr., recently wrote and published an excellent book about Harford County's timber bridges. They indicate the Macton Bridge may have been located on Macton Road, about one-third mile west of the intersection with Whiteford Road, crossing a small stream leading to Broad Creek known as Robbins Run, near Davis Corner Road.²
Macton Bridge was one of Harford County's last surviving bridges, likely lost in the late 1930s or early 1940s.
Considering all of the information, or lack of information, about the bridge, the most likely location was on Whiteford Road, in Macton, as it crosses Broad Creek. This location is the same as Cox's Mill Covered Bridge, built in the late 1830s. Cox's Mill changed to McCoy's Mill, then to Robinson's Mill. Macton Bridge probably replaced Cox's Mill Bridge in the last half of the 1800s.
UPDATED: April 17, 2010; Information provided about possible locations of Macton Bridge.
¹ C. Milton Wright, Our Harford Heritage, A History of Harford County Maryland, (Self published: 1967), p. 113.
²Jack L. Shagena, Jr., Henry C. Peden, Jr., Timber Bridges - Covered and Uncovered: Harford County's Rural Heritage. (Privately printed by the authors; Bel Air, MD, March, 2010), p. 99.
Macton or Broad Creek Covered Bridge
Macton or Broad Creek Covered Bridge. Photo courtesy of The Historical Society of Harford County, Inc.

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