America's Covered Bridges. Ronald G. Knapp

G. Knapp also is a retired professor, but of Cultural and Historical Geography, at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Over the past forty plus years through some twenty books, numerous articles, and many lectures throughout the world, he has analyzed, celebrated, and promoted an understanding of China’s architectural heritage. In recent years, his research and writings have broadened to include the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia and America’s covered bridges.

      Born in Pittsburgh, Knapp saw his first covered bridge in the early 1950s in the counties north towards Erie as he visited an old farm owned by a family member. No photographs were taken and memories are only hazy. In 1955, his family moved to south Florida, a state without historic covered bridges but with many folly bridges built more for decoration than function. When he moved to New York in 1968 to begin his college teaching career, he found that the college was just four miles from the bypassed Perrine’s Covered Bridge, the second oldest in the state. His Historical Geography course often focused on the evolution of transportation in the local region. These tentative forays pale in comparison with Terry Miller’s ongoing and extensive investigation of covered bridges throughout North America during the same decades.

      Knapp’s wide-ranging field work throughout rural China documenting vernacular architecture led to researching and photographing old bridges, including increasing numbers of covered bridges. While several articles and a small 1993 book on Chinese bridges were published, it was not until 2005 as a participant in a Chinese conference devoted to newly discovered covered bridges that his focus began to change seriously. It was fortunate that accomplished photographer, A. Chester Ong, attended the conference with him. After traveling nearly twenty times together to remote areas of China and Southeast Asia, they have collaborated on four award-winning books. In 2008, they published the first comprehensive book in English about Chinese bridges, among the least known and understood of China’s many wonders. Chinese Bridges: Living Architecture from China’s Past was listed as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 by Choice magazine. This book is the model we have used as we have written and illustrated America’s Covered Bridges: Practical Crossings—Nostalgic Icons.

      It was purely by chance that in early 2005 Miller unexpectedly learned of the existence of Chinese covered bridges while traveling to a music conference in Fujian Province, China. Later that year, he was able to visit two Chinese counties to see China’s marvelous langqiao (“corridor bridges”), but it was not until 2007 that he met Knapp and Ong at the 2nd International Conference on Chinese Lounge [Covered] Bridges in Shouning County, Fujian Province, China.

      Miller visited Knapp at his home in New York in 2008, and they spent two days visiting covered bridges there. While traveling, Knapp proposed that the two write a comprehensive book on American covered bridges, with Chester Ong’s gorgeous photography taking center stage.

      Since late summer 2010, the three have managed ten bridge shooting trips covering selected areas of the United States and Canada in pursuit of this goal.

      This book has no intention of being “everything about covered bridges” or “the last word” on the subject even as its heft suggests significant comprehensiveness. We see the book, instead, as a reconsideration of the subject and offer a few new ways to view these utilitarian objects that have now become nostalgic icons. We provide also enough information about research resources to make this book and its associated website a starting point for further work by a new generation of bridge scholars.

      Co-author Ronald G. Knapp with photographer Chester A. Ong at a village bridge in China’s Shouning County. (Terry E. Miller, 2007)

      Co-authors Miller (left) and Knapp (center) with photographer Ong (right) at Grafton County, New Hampshire’s Swiftwater Bridge. (Sara Stone Miller, 2010)

      Ong, Knapp, and Sara Stone Miller pause for lunch at Covered Bridge Pizza, North Kingsville, Ohio, inside a portion of Ashtabula County’s former Eagleville Bridge. (Terry E. Miller, 2011)

      New Perspectives on North America’s Covered Bridges

      Just think about it: you can still drive over (or, more properly, through) an all-wood covered bridge constructed as many as 180 years ago before bridge builders had even explained mathematically how bridges work. Over these years, the American covered bridge has passed through a series of phases, from its beginning as a common utilitarian river crossing to become a principal icon for an imagined, romanticized, and nostalgic past. As our perceptions have changed, so have our attitudes towards everything that affects the life of covered bridges, including “progress,” preservation, and re-imagination. While most Americans living east of the Mississippi or in the Northwest probably have seen a covered bridge, few besides a small body of enthusiasts have given them much thought. When examined in greater detail, covered bridges tell us much about our history, attitudes, ideas of progress, and sense of self. We seek to reflect about these matters in this book.

      For those who simply enjoy visiting covered bridges, the rural or village setting, the rocky creek, or the chance to take some photographs of one’s children throwing stones into the water are sufficient attractions. For dedicated “covered bridge lovers,” however, there is much more to discuss and even debate. At one end of the spectrum are purists who desire that the bridges remain in their original condition, but at the other end are people who accept all manner of “preservation,” reconstruction, and alteration. The point where push comes to shove is in compiling the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges’ World Guide to Covered Bridges, the edition of 2009 being the seventh (going back to 1956) and the official list of sanctioned covered bridges. Earlier editions began attracting controversy when they started listing some of the newly built covered bridges found on housing estates, private property, and in parks. These disagreements were a major reason why it took twenty years (1989–2009) to compile the latest edition, which now differentiates “authentic” covered bridges from ones deemed less authentic. In spite of the apparent agreement in the guide, not everyone is satisfied, and some argue for delisting of certain of the sanctioned bridges or adding ones that were omitted.

      What is a Covered Bridge?

      Defining a “covered bridge” would not strike most people as anything controversial. Is it not simply a bridge with a roof? But the discussion can raise hackles when questions of authenticity arise. For many years, the major divide was between those who accepted newly built, often undersized “fake” bridges and those who rejected them, at least with respect to including them in the World Guide or featuring them in Covered Bridge Topics, the National Society’s periodical. Today, the rapidly growing number of replicas—newly built copies—of original authentic bridges, where the original structure was either lost through arson, flood, or tornado or merely torn down and replaced by a new bridge using between a few and no original truss members, is creating new challenges. Resolving these questions turns on one fundamental question: how do we define a “covered bridge”?

      If the descriptor—“covered”—defines the type, then any bridge with a roof and siding merits inclusion. But there are alternate ways to define the type as well. Some use the material as the critical element: the bridge must be all wood or a combination of wood and metal with wood dominating. According to this definition, then, stone arch bridges with wooden covers, often found in China, would not satisfy the criteria and would be excluded. For example, the now famous “Japanese Covered Bridge” in Hoi An, Vietnam, well known to thousands of Western tourists flocking to this UNESCO World Heritage City, does not qualify for inclusion since it is a pair of two small brick arches flanking a center span built on a stone slab, this base then covered with a small Buddhist temple.

      Perhaps the most stringent definition is based on structure. To be “authentic,” the bridge must have a functional load-supporting truss system of some sort. As a consequence, “stringer bridges,” which have simple beams for support, do not qualify. Similarly, simple bridges having non-functioning