Designated as a National Civil Engineering Landmark in 2001, the Bunker Hill Covered Bridge is the only remaining example in wood of the Improved Lattice Truss patented by General Herman Haupt. It joins the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Dorton Arena in representing North Carolina on this prestigious list.

One of only two original remaining covered bridges in North Carolina, the other being Mt. Pisgah in Randolph County, the Bunker Hill Covered Bridge was built in 1895 by Andy L. Ramsour. Catawba County Commissioners in 1894 had called on nearby owners of Bunker Hill Farm to build and maintain a bridge that would cross Lyle's Creek on the old Island Ford Road, a former Native American trail. The landowners hired Ramsour, keeper of the Horseford covered bridge that spanned the Catawba River north of Hickory.

The Bunker Hill Covered Bridge has significant associations not only with the Civil War, through Haupt, but also with the American Revolution. Of the Island Ford Road, on which the bridge rests, Dr. J. E. Hodges, President of the Catawba County Historical Association in the 1950s, writes in 1959 that following the Battle of Cowpens in 1781, General Morgan detached 531 British prisoners under guard of Colonel William Washington's dragoons and Colonel Charles McDowell over the Island Ford Road. The men crossed Lyle's Creek at the Bunker Hill Ford on their way to the Island Ford of the Catawba River, where they were received by the Commissary of Prisoners and conveyed to the interior of Virginia.