Dunns Bridge is an unincorporated community in Kankakee Township, Jasper County,

Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...

, United States. It sits along the

Kankakee River The Kankakee River is a tributary of the Illinois River, approximately long, in the Corn Belt, Central Corn Belt Plains of northwestern Indiana and northeastern Illinois in the United States. At one time, the river drained one of the largest we ...

at the south end of two bridges over the river, connecting Jasper and

Porter Porter may refer to: Companies * Porter Airlines, Canadian airline based in Toronto * Porter Chemical Company, a defunct U.S. toy manufacturer of chemistry sets * Porter Motor Company, defunct U.S. car manufacturer * H.K. Porter, Inc., a locom ...

counties. The historic Dunns Bridge lies just west of a modern bridge that carries Porter County Road 500 East and Jasper County Road 400 East over the Kankakee. The bridge and community are southeast of the town of Kouts and northeast of the town of Wheatfield. The bridge lies north of

Tefft, Indiana Tefft is an unincorporated community in Kankakee Township, Jasper County, Indiana, United States. History Tefft was platted by Isaac Dunn in 1884, and named Dunnville. The name, however, became confused with Danville so Dunnville was renamed T ...

, which was formerly known as Dunnville. Both the town and the community around the bridge, formally known as ''Dunn's Original KKK Pleasure Resort'', were laid out by Isaac D. Dunn.

Historic bridge

Dunns Bridge is located at . The bridge is rumored to be built at least partially from materials obtained from the original

Ferris wheel A Ferris wheel (also called a big wheel, giant wheel or an observation wheel) is an amusement ride consisting of a rotating upright wheel with multiple passenger-carrying components (commonly referred to as passenger cars, cabins, tubs, gondola ...

at the 1893

World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The ...

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. The current maintainers of the bridge, the Porter County Parks Department, state only that it is "built from parts of a building from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair." Upon a cursory look at the lack of parallelness of the tops of the arches (flattening), the Ferris Wheel heritage is impossible. More likely, the arches may have been salvaged from a building at that exposition and the general similarity to a wheel was noted and the misinformation took root as legend. There are four small sections, two at each end, that appear to be ornamental. These smaller sections have the right radius for a ferris wheel. The radius and arch shape match that of Machinery Hall or Electricity Hall from the Exposition. Machinery Hall burned and the steel was sold as scrap at about the time the bridge was built. The bridge was renovated in 2003, winning a state award for the engineering work involved.Dunn's Bridge restoration wins state engineering award
''The Chesterton Tribune''. Retrieved 1 June 2008

References

Unincorporated communities in Jasper County, Indiana Unincorporated communities in Indiana {{JasperCountyIN-geo-stub