Lower Cross Roads Covered Bridge

The main route from Bel Air to Lower Cross Roads (now Churchville) crossed over Bynum Run, a little southwest of Fountain Green near John Carroll School. A covered bridge provided travelers with access to cross the waterway.

The Independent Citizen, on September 11, 1828, advertised for proposals for building a bridge "over Binam's run, on the road leading from Bel-Air to Lower Cross Roads." The bridge specifications called for the bridge "to be built of wood, and 30 feet in the clear; the abutments of stone, to be laid with lime and sand; roofed and weather-boarded."¹

Maryland Session Laws of 1829, Chapter 123, passed on February 22, 1830 provided for a "contract made by the Commissioners of Harford county with Preston M. Comas and Hannah, his wife, for land for the site of a bridge over Binam's run in said county." There is some confusion as to exactly where the bridge was located for the Session Law Act also was for "a road from each end of the Bridge, to intersect the public Road leading from Belle Air to Hubert's Cross Roads in said county." It is possible that a decision was made to construct the bridge on the main road and not provide for an additional road as stated in the act.

¹Jack 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. 78

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