Built in 1868. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
From the record
“Thompson Mill Covered Bridge is a covered bridge which crosses the Kaskaskia River 2 miles (3.2 km) northeast of Cowden, Illinois. The 160-foot-4-inch (48.87 m) Howe truss bridge is only 10 feet 7 inches (3.23 m) wide, making it the narrowest covered bridge in Illinois.”
Wikipedia article Thompson Mill Covered Bridge, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 6 National Register listings published here for Shelby County · listed in 1975 · category: Structure · built in 1868.
National Register reference number.75000675- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
1 since 2013
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Thompson Mill Covered Bridge
in 2013, burning about 9 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Cowden, the town this property stands in, in 14 storm reports between 2000 and 2025: 7 hail, 4 thunderstorm wind, 2 flash flood, 1 lightning.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Lightning struck a propane line and quickly spred to an 8 foot by 12 foot shed. The shed was quickly engulfed in flames and was a total loss. There were no injuries.
Hail ranging from dime to golf ball size was reported during this time frame. A report came in of softball size hail at the Hudson Power Plant. Damage ocurred to employee vehicles, but no estimates were available. Location of this hail is 5 east of US 128, just north of Holiday.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
1 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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