In July 1864, William T. Washer was contracted with Spencer and Perry Counties to build a one hundred forty-eight foot yellow poplar Burr Arch-Trust Bridge north of an early ford on Buffalo Trace leading from Rome to Vincennes, Indiana, using lumber sawed at John Harrison Huffman's water-powered saw mill on the west bank of the Anderson River. The contract called for ten thousand dollars in lawful money of the United States. Around the mills, store, and later a church, school, physician, blacksmith, carpenter, and a post office established in 1883, a community developed. James Hale later ran the last steam mill there, making large numbers of spokes for Henry Ford's automobile wheels. The dam used for the water mill was removed in 1912, and the covered bridge was discontinued in 2004. George Huffman, a pioneer settler born in 1784 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, came to Indiana Territory by 1804 and settled in Spencer County about 1812, purchasing land from the U.S. Government in 1815. He built an early grist mill about 1816 that drew customers from miles away, including the Lincoln family, with Abraham making trips on horseback. Later, George and his son John Harrison Huffman added a combination water grist mill and sash saw mill that did large business, while also operating a store, farming, flatboating lumber, corn meal, flour, and goods south, and accumulating more than eleven hundred acres along both sides of the Anderson River. The Huffmans donated property for a nearby frame school in 1851, a cemetery, and a Christian church in 1858, and in 1844 burned bricks and cut windows, doors, and porch pillars for a two-story homestead standing west of the Anderson River south of the road in Spencer County. John Harrison Huffman's sons John R., also a miller, and George W. served in the Civil War, and George W. was killed at Vicksburg.