Photograph of Portland Mills Covered Bridge — Photograph by Nyttend, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Portland Mills Bridge

Built in 1856. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

From the record

“The Portland Mills Covered Bridge is the second oldest covered bridge in Parke County, Indiana, being built the same year as the Crooks Covered Bridge. It is a single span Burr Arch Truss covered bridge that was built by Henry Wolf in 1856.”
Wikipedia article Portland Mills Covered Bridge, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 47 National Register listings published here for Parke County · listed in 1978 · category: Structure · built in 1856.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
Address. W of Marshall off SR 47, Marshall, 47989
When was it listed? December 1978
Category. structure
Also known as. Parke County Covered Bridges TR
Township. Greene township
When was it built? 1856
National Register reference number. 78000408 - 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

7 since 2002

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 7 fires within 5 miles of Portland Mills Bridge between 2002 and 2005, burning about 10 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 were 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	3
Debris and open burning	2
Arson/incendiarism	2

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
30 August 2003	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
14 March 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
13 March 2004	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
1 December 2002	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
7 November 2004	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
4 October 2004	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	8.0 acres	Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
17 October 2003	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office	not named

Storms near this property

17 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Marshall, the town this property stands in, in 17 storm reports between 1994 and 2019: 14 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 1 flood. 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
June 2018	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	$8,000	Trees were down across roads around a neighborhood in this location due to damaging thunderstorm wind gusts. The power was out as well.
May 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	$6,000	Several trees were downed on roads near Marshall due to damaging thunderstorm wind gusts.
May 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	$2,000	Power lines and tree limbs were reported down due to damaging thunderstorm winds.
June 2015	Flood	Marshall	$1,500	Water was flowing over roadways in Marshall due to heavy rainfall of 1.40 inches in 40 minutes.
July 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	$1,000	A tree was blown down due to thunderstorm wind gusts.
January 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	-	Wind gust was measured by a cooperative observer.
May 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	-	Eight to ten inch tree limbs were down due to damaging thunderstorm winds. Trash dumpsters were also overturned.
May 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	-	Three foot tree limbs were off trees due to damaging thunderstorm winds.
April 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	-	A wind gust of 71 mph was measured at Marshall, and trees were downed at Rosedale.
May 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	-	no account filed
May 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	-	no account filed
May 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	-	no account filed
May 2003	Hail	Marshall	-	no account filed
February 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	-	no account filed
July 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	-	no account filed
July 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Marshall	-	no account filed
July 1996	Hail	Marshall	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Parke County

Map coverage status

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

6 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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Arch in the Town of Marshall	5.3 miles	1985
Narrows Bridge	5.5 miles	1978
Lusk Home and Mill Site	5.6 miles	1974
Beeson Bridge	5.7 miles	1978
Turkey Run State Park	6.4 miles	2019
Richard Lieber Log Cabin	6.5 miles	2001

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 78000408 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Parke County	All 47 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

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.