Hays Bridge Historic District

Near the meeting of Licking Creek and the West Branch of the Conococheague Creek, southeast of Mercersburg in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, the district centres on a three-bay-wide, three-story stone house built into a slope, probably in the latter part of the first quarter of the 19th century. Its two main-floor rooms each have a fireplace and a tightwinder staircase, and the attic floor carries a layer of lime and clay mortar about an inch thick, a treatment linked to 18th-century construction in southern Pennsylvania. A stone bank barn with German siding stands nearby amid a working apple orchard. Several hundred feet south, a double-arched stone bridge of about 100 feet carries Township Route 331 over the Conococheague, and to the southwest, a Burr truss covered bridge built in 1883 spans Licking Creek. The site is valued for its regional stone building tradition, its 19th-century bridge engineering, and its rural setting.