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. ©
By Rick-AngelOfThyNight
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