On May 24, 1886, the Jackson County Court assigned D. K. Hood and Elias Stone to determine an ideal location for a bridge on John Carnahan’s Mill Creek property. They chose a site where an old bridge once stood, above Carnahan’s Ford.
Subsequent steps in the bridge’s development followed. On May 21, the court clerk announced bids for the bridge’s abutments. By August 4, William Quincy and J. Grim secured the contract to construct the bridge’s piers. October 13 saw the court clerk calling for superstructure bids, with R. B. Cunningham winning the contract by December 13. The set prices were $3.40 per perch for the abutments and $9 per linear foot for the superstructure.
However, the project faced a temporary halt. On April 13, 1887, the court suspended all bridge construction activities. A year later, on April 11, 1888, William T. Green urged the court to resume the project. Consequently, on May 7, D. K. Hood and John Hamilton were appointed to secure land for a new public road, linking roads on either side of Mill Creek. This led to a new 20-foot-wide right-of-way, acquired at no cost to the county. Quincy, Grim, and Cunningham then resumed bridge construction.
Costs were tallied as follows: the abutments cost $1,573.65, the superstructure cost $1,044, the bridge approaches, awarded to Wesley Sayre, cost $59.75, and the woodwork for the approaches, awarded to T. T. Hartley, was $180. The entire 116-foot-long covered bridge was finished either in December 1889 or January 1890, totaling $2,860.
On April 9, 1924, the county clerk requested the State Road Commission to assign an engineer to develop plans for new abutments near William Weekly’s property along the Left Fork of the Sandy River. This was for an upcoming project by the state to create a new alignment for US Route 33. Bids were sought to disassemble the bridge at Carnahan’s Ford and reconstruct it closer to Weekly’s land. By July 2, the contract for relocating the bridge, priced at $1,050, was awarded to C. R. Kent, R. R. Hardesty, and E. R. Duke. The project was completed later in the year, with the crossing becoming known as the Sarvis Fork Covered Bridge.
The Sarvis Fork Covered Bridge was repaired in 1979 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. In 2000, a $598,233 contract to rehabilitate the bridge was awarded to R. C. Construction Company & Sons, Inc. of Cutler, Ohio. The project involved replacing the floor system with timber decking on steel stringers, installing a stainless steel roof, and replacing wooden siding where necessary.
