One of the first bridges to cross the St. Johns River was built and opened in 1926 at the same time a road was paved to Ocala all the way to Barberville. This bridge that was built was a draw bridge and would lift up to let the bigger ferry's and boats through. The original metal bridge was moved to a nearby locations of the St. Johns River which we set off to find and to no success we could not find it. What we did find however is The covered part of the bridge and the boathouse which would be used by a tender. This is a very eerie little place you can almost feel something lurking and watching out of the windows of the boat house here.

There is a story that when the first tender which was a former ferry operator was on duty he was shot in the back dead center in the middle of the bridge. When he feel to his death his head was in Lake County and his body was in Volusia County. The counties argued over jurisdiction and the murder was never investigated nor solved. The operator was McQueen Johnson who was killed and to this day it still remains a mystery.

In 1978 a new bridge was built and by 1980 the Bridge House and Covered Part were moved to The Barberville Creative Arts Pioneer Settlement just as the Midway Methodist Church was. The fortunate part about this investigation is we were able to investigate the bridge house because it was moved to a public location along with a very old house boat which really grabbed my attention. PGS loves boats and ships trust me I almost boarded it lol.

The covered bridge now sits over land as some sort of landmark to the entrance of the pioneer settlement. The pioneer settlement is interesting in that many artifacts found throughout Volusia county are brought here. An example of that would be the dugout canoe which was found in Deleon Springs or the historical Midway Methodist Church which was moved here. But the bridge is now part of this and although there is not alot of activity here it serves as a large part of history within the area and now overlooks its visitors who enter the pioneer settlement. 

We will return of course to work more with the bridge see if we can work with the ghost of McQueen Johnson hopefully we will be able to solve this murder mystery as this is our second and strange covered bridge investigation in the history of our organization so definitely as you can see this is a special haunted place.

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Rick-AngelOfThyNight