If Parke County is known for one thing, it's their covered bridges.

There are 31 of these historic structures dotting the landscape of this small rural county.

More than any other county in the United States, earning Parke County the distinction of the covered bridge capital of the world.

And for more than 70 years, the Covered Bridge Festival has drawn big crowds.

Folks come out in droves to shop, eat funky food, check out local arts and crafts, and admire these iconic bridges.

The first covered bridge in Parke County was built in 1856.

And at one point, there were as many as 53 of them across the county.

They needed all of these bridges to navigate a landscape that was rutted by massive glaciers in the last Ice Age.

>> And as the glaciers traveled south, into our area, the glaciers were acting like bulldozers.

They were pushing mounds and mounds of debris.

And those glaciers began to recede.

They just left those piles of dirt.

That's where we are.

It's called a terminal or the end, the terminal moraine.

So as a result, we have these big mounds.

Between those mounds, the valleys, we have just hundreds and hundreds of creeks and little rivers.

Most of them were built alongside mills, because otherwise if you would have just had a mill that built along a low spot in the creek, you could only travel that certain times of the year, when the water was down.

It was really important for those towns to have access across the creek all year long.

And as a result then, there was a mill, and then typically came a bridge, and then typically the towns began to grow up around that because people could get there and do their economic activity every day.

>> The bridges were so important to the local economy, they covered them to keep the structures safe and dry.

>> If you had all of this wood exposed to the elements, it's gonna rot a lot quicker.

They certainly wouldn't last 150 years.

>> Those covered bridges have survived maybe because it wasn't a very rich county.

And so we didn't tear them down, as new technology came for new concrete and steel bridges, we didn't tear down perfectly good bridges 150 years ago.

We kept them going.

It's really important to us, it's important to most people, and it allowed Parke County to grow into what it is today.

>> Today, the Covered Bridge Festival is an epic celebration of the bridges and Parke County that brings people back year after year.

>> We expect about 2 million people to come into our county for the ten-day festival.

And it's -- it's very exciting because you see people come back year after year.

This is now a tradition with their family.

>> We come every year.

It's so much fun.

Good to see people.

Come back to the same shops and greet some people, and it's a really fun time.

>> Ever since I was young, I've been coming here, kind of watching it grow.

I try to make a yearly tradition of it, come home for the festival.

I like seeing all the handmade stuff, you know.

>> Oh, gosh, it's a must-have to go around to all the shops, the little ma and pop places, and people that you haven't seen and little handcrafted items that you can't get anywhere else.

>> Starting on the second Friday in October, artists, woodworkers and crafters fan out across nine different towns to sell their goods and display their art.

Many of these artists and craftspeople are staples of the long-running festival, like Blaine Berry, who has been coming here for year to show off his work and demonstrate his process.

>> I do it pretty much basically the same way they did back those days.

The main thing I do is old-style Windsor chairs.

I do stuff from the late 1700s to the early 1800s.

>> And Berry's work has caught the eye of the experts at the Smithsonian, where this chair will be on display starting next summer.

Many of the artists whose work you see at the festival are from right here in Parke County, like painter Lynne Dunnavant.

>> When I come to the bridges, I feel like I'm home because it's just part of my life and my history.

>> She paints a number of different subjects, but she always seems to return to the covered bridges, a passion that she has shared with the folks who flock to the festival every year.

>> And a lot of times I think why people are drawn to them and like them, because when they come back for the festival, they may say, oh, I remember this bridge!

And I grew up here.

They like to buy the bridges because they lived it also, and it's a memory for them.

>> Dunnavant's work is shown at the Covered Bridge Art Gallery in Rockville, alongside bridge paintings by many other local artists.

>> We have so many great artists in our county, and some of the members have been doing art since the festival started.

>> The paintings at the gallery, just like the bridges themselves, are windows to the past that help folks in Parke County tell their story in bright, vivid colors.

>> So I think it's important that people understand our history here in Parke County and how proud we are of our history.

>> I do too.

I do too.

They like learning about it too.

>> I think so too.

>> And the food.

>> And the food.

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