Cox Creek Legends: The Ghost Bridge in Florence, Alabama

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated September 7, 2026 · How we verify

The Ghost Bridge in Florence, Alabama, is one of the few haunted landmarks in the state that a visitor can no longer stand on. The narrow span crossed Cox Creek northeast of town, carried traffic for the better part of a century, and then went away in pieces: first the cars, then the walkers, then the bridge itself. What remains is a creek, a set of approaches, and a body of local stories that has outlived the structure that produced it.

Old Bingham Bridge: The Span Over Cox Creek

The bridge was built in 1924 over Cox Creek and was known for most of its working life as Old Bingham Bridge. That is the name on the maps and in the county records; Ghost Bridge is what people in Florence started calling it, and the nickname eventually stuck harder than the original.

It was closed to vehicular traffic in 2002. Pedestrians kept using it for another dozen years until it was closed to them as well in 2014. In 2017 the structure was dismantled. None of that is mysterious. Small rural bridges from the 1920s reach the end of their lives on a predictable schedule, and a span that can no longer safely take a pickup truck is not going to be maintained indefinitely for teenagers with flashlights.

Quick Facts on Florence’s Ghost Bridge

• Built: 1924, over Cox Creek
• Original name: Old Bingham Bridge
• Closed to vehicles: 2002
• Closed to pedestrians: 2014
• Dismantled: 2017
• Status: gone; the site remains

The Bride, the Soldiers and the Man Who Waves

Everything that follows is folklore. There is no documented, verified paranormal event associated with the bridge, and the stories should be read as a community’s accumulated telling rather than as a record of anything.

The most repeated tale involves a couple whose car went off the bridge and into the creek below. Fatal wrecks on narrow rural crossings are common enough that the story is plausible in outline, but it circulates without names, dates or details, which is a fair warning about how much weight to put on it.

A second story concerns a young woman in a wedding dress, said to have died on her wedding night, whose figure people claim to have glimpsed near the span. She is the classic form of the American roadside ghost: a bride, a bridge, and no surname anywhere in the retelling.

Others have described spectral soldiers in the area, figures that observers connect to the Civil War. And the strangest of the local accounts, because it is the least dramatic, involves an elderly man who appears to wave at passersby and is gone when they look again. Small, specific and undemanding, it is the sort of detail that tends to survive precisely because nobody is trying to sell it.

What People Say They Hear at the Creek

Sound features more heavily in the Ghost Bridge accounts than sight. Visitors and locals have reported footsteps with no walker attached to them, and the distant note of a train whistle carrying across the creek. Whether those are echoes of the area’s working past, ordinary noise in a wooded bottomland at night, or something less easily filed away is exactly the question that keeps people driving out there.

It is worth noting how the reputation has behaved since 2017. Most haunted places depend on a building to hold the stories. When the structure comes down, the folklore usually thins out and then disappears. Here it has not. People still name the spot, still tell the wreck story, still repeat the bride and the waving man. The bridge became more of an idea than an object some time before the last beam came out.

Visiting the Site of the Ghost Bridge

Be clear about what is there before making the drive: the bridge was dismantled in 2017 and cannot be walked, photographed or crossed. What survives is the Cox Creek setting northeast of Florence and whatever remains of the approaches, along with a great many photographs taken before the demolition.

Anyone going should treat the land around the old crossing as they would any rural property in Lauderdale County: respect posted signs, stay off private ground, and do not go climbing on remnants of an abandoned structure. The Ghost Bridge is now a stop for people interested in the story rather than the span, and the honest version of the visit involves standing beside a creek at dusk and deciding for yourself how much of the telling you believe.

Sources

• Guide to the Ghost Towns of Alabama
• Ghost Towns of Alabama
• Alabama Ghost-Town Project
• Timeline: The rise and fall of Benson
• rootsweb.ancestry.com
• Wikipedia: List of ghost towns in Alabama

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