The legend of Stuckey's Bridge has been told in Lauderdale County for generations, though the line between fact and folklore dissolved long ago. The story goes that a man called Stuckey -- sometimes linked to the Dalton Gang, though no historical evidence supports that connection -- operated a roadside inn near the Chunky River crossing. Travelers passing through the Mississippi backcountry would stop for the night, and some of them never left. Stuckey allegedly robbed his guests, killed them, and disposed of the remains along the riverbank. The number that legend has settled on is twenty victims before the community caught up with him. According to the tale, Stuckey was hanged from the bridge that crossed the Chunky at the scene of his murders. Whether the man named Stuckey existed at all remains unverifiable, but the story has burrowed deep into the identity of this stretch of river. Lauderdale County archives confirm a contract to build a bridge at this location was written in 1847, and construction is estimated around 1850 -- placing the original crossing in the right era for the legend.

The bridge standing today is not the one from the legend. In 1901, the Virginia Bridge and Iron Company erected the current iron through-truss structure to replace the earlier crossing. It served as the main route over the Chunky River for decades before modern road construction rendered it obsolete. The bridge was designated a Mississippi Landmark on August 4, 1984, and added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 16, 1988. Stripped of its function, the bridge now exists in that eerie middle ground between infrastructure and relic. The metal framework has oxidized to a deep reddish brown. The wooden deck planks, where they remain, show decades of weathering. Trees crowd in from both banks, and the Chunky River moves slowly beneath -- dark water over a sandy bottom, cypress roots twisting along the margins. It is the kind of place that feels abandoned even in daylight, which is precisely why the ghost stories thrive.

Locals and thrill-seekers have reported the same handful of phenomena for decades. The most persistent sighting is an old man carrying a lantern, walking along the river's edge below the bridge. Some visitors describe hearing loud splashes in the water beneath the span -- said to represent the sound of Stuckey's body hitting the Chunky after his noose was cut. Others claim to have seen the silhouette of a corpse hanging from the bridge beams themselves. Whether these accounts stem from genuine experience, overactive imagination, or the power of a story told too many times around campfires, they have given Stuckey's Bridge a reputation that extends far beyond Lauderdale County. In 2018, the Travel Channel featured the bridge on its series Most Terrifying Places in America, in a special episode titled 'Haunted Road Trips.' The segment referred to the site as 'Old Man Stuckey's Bridge,' cementing the legend in the vocabulary of paranormal tourism.

Ghost stories aside, Stuckey's Bridge matters as a piece of Mississippi's engineering heritage. Iron truss bridges built at the turn of the twentieth century are vanishing across the rural South, replaced by concrete and steel beam spans that carry heavier loads but lack any architectural personality. The Virginia Bridge and Iron Company produced dozens of these structures across the region, and surviving examples grow rarer each year. Stuckey's Bridge endures partly because of its landmark designations and partly because the legend generates enough public interest to discourage demolition. The Chunky River itself adds to the atmosphere -- a slow, tannin-stained waterway winding through pine and hardwood bottomland typical of east-central Mississippi. From the air, the bridge is a slender line across the dark ribbon of the river, easy to miss if you do not know to look. On the ground, it is something else entirely: a place where local history, folk horror, and industrial craftsmanship converge on a single rusting span.