Mebane's Bridge, also called Mebane's Folly and originally known as Fishing Creek Bridge, is a single-lane concrete Luten arch road bridge in Eden, North Carolina, United States which spans the Dan River. The bridge was built by the Luten Bridge Company of Knoxville, Tennessee in 1924 under contract by the Rockingham County Board of Commissioners near the confluence of the Dan River and Fishing Creek. The crossing was conceived by industrialist Benjamin Franklin Mebane Jr., who wanted the bridge to be built to connect the nearby towns of Spray and Draper to a tract of land he owned on the far side of the river where he sought to build a chemical plant. Mebane had also assisted in the election of three commissioners to support the plan.
The cost of the bridge, its location in a remote area, and the nature of Mebane's influence on the commission created an intense political controversy in the county. Embroiled in the dispute and subject to membership disputes, the county commission declared that it would not honor the contract shortly after the Luten Bridge Company began work on the project. Urged on by Mebane, the company completed the bridge and later sued the county for breach of contract. The decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Rockingham County v. The Luten Bridge Co ruled that the bridge firm had a duty to mitigate damages after the county's breach, thus limiting the award it could collect. The case was later incorporated into many American contract law casebooks. With the road intended to link up the project incomplete, the bridge sat isolated over the Dan River for about a decade after its completion, occasionally being used by pedestrians. It was connected to dirt roads in 1935, which were paved in 1968, at which point the bridge was renamed Mebane's Bridge. It was closed to road traffic in 2003.