America's Covered Bridges. Ronald G. Knapp

is no necessity for a roof. (A. Chester Ong, 2010)

      Rugged cut stone abutments and a pier support Maine’s Porter-Parsonfield Bridge between Oxford and York Counties. This 160-foot Paddleford truss bridge was built in 1876. (Terry E. Miller, 2010)

      Like many bridges in the Illinois-Iowa-Kansas area, where streams are muddy and lack defined banks, Sangamon County, Illinois’s Glenarm Bridge sits on four metal cylinders filled with concrete, with short open approaches to the bridge. (Terry E. Miller, 1968)

      A buggy emerges from an old and long-forgotten bridge over the Yocona River in Lafayette County, Mississippi, in the early 1900s. The Town lattice design was preferred in most parts of the South. (Lafayette County, Mississippi Genealogy and History Network)

      Chapter Two traces the history and development of bridge design. At first using only the materials at hand—mainly timber but small pieces of iron hardware as well—bridge builders developed an increasing array of structural patterns—called “trusses”—which offered greater and greater flexibility, strength, and efficiency. Hundreds of bridge trusses were devised, many of them receiving patents, though practically speaking only about a dozen came into common use.

      Chapter Three addresses a question that has long perplexed bridge enthusiasts: exactly how were covered bridges erected? After exploring several theories that have been proposed, we examine a body of evidence comprised of bridge treatises, personal reminiscences, and vintage photographs. We suspect that the answers have been difficult to come by because the methodology of bridge construction was simply taken for granted.

      Chapter Four traces the fate of the covered bridge into modern times. As befell the canals and water-powered mills that developed during the same period as the covered bridge, new technology gradually rendered the covered bridge obsolete. As bridge building became an engineering science and foundries produced ever greater amounts of iron in ever larger pieces, wooden bridges gave way to metal bridges. As wood was giving way to metal, bridge building transitioned through a period of “combination” bridges in the 1870s to the 1890s, some being open, some covered. Oddly, though, the building of covered bridges did not end with the development of iron bridges. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when wooden bridges were mostly obsolete in New England, the Middle Atlantic States, and parts of the Midwest, two other areas began building covered bridges in great numbers—the American Northwest, especially Oregon, and the Canadian provinces of Québec and New Brunswick. Both areas were remote from iron foundries and steel mills in regions where wood was more plentiful. The American South, for similar reasons, continued building covered bridges into the 1930s.

      In Bartow County, Georgia, travelers crossing the Lowry or Euharlee Creek Bridge first had to cross a wide flood plain on an open approach. While necessary, such structures were subject to rapid deterioration because of exposure to the elements. (A. Chester Ong, 2011)

      This chapter also considers the period when covered bridges became, in most areas at least, obsolete, if not nuisances and impediments to progress. If covered bridges were well maintained, they remained capable of carrying most traffic, but increasing vehicle size and heavier loads created problems. Large trucks now carried freight, buses became heavier and larger, and farmers had tractors pulling larger and larger pieces of farm equipment over country roads. Another major change was the increasing use of school buses, especially when many small rural schools consolidated. To most people, especially those living nearby, covered bridges were considered simply old, obsolete, and “dangerous.”

      While New Englanders generally valued their covered bridges as links to the past, elsewhere many people viewed them negatively. “Progressive” county officials pledged to replace them with nondescript, generic concrete and steel bridges fit for the modern times. In some areas, where officials were slow to discard the old bridges, local citizens forced the process by burning bridges. Although arson is a felony crime, relatively few of the culprits were caught, often on account of local politics where who you are trumps what you did. Throughout this time, floods, ice, windstorms, and other natural calamities also took a heavy toll, as they had been doing since the advent of bridge building. However, whereas in the nineteenth century when a bridge was lost to nature and would likely be replaced with a similar bridge, by this time the replacements were always modern.

      Built in 1877 in Coshocton County, Ohio, the Mohawk Creek Bridge survived into the 1930s. Here, an early car emerges from the bridge. (Terry E. Miller Collection)

      Groveton, New Hampshire (Coös County) prospered until its paper mill closed in 2008, and its bridge is now the town’s main attraction. Built in 1852 by Captain Charles Richardson using the Paddleford truss, the bridge served vehicles until being bypassed in 1939. In 1964–5, Milton and Arnold Graton refurbished the bridge. (A. Chester Ong, 2010)

      Daredevil workers construct a Town lattice truss for a rail crossing during the winter. Unusually high trusses were required to support the extreme weight of locomotives and rolling stock. (NSPCB Archives, R. S. Allen Collection)

      In 1901, when the Sebasticook River flooded, this covered bridge crashed against a new steel rail bridge near the river’s mouth in Winslow, Maine. (NSPCB Archives, R. S. Allen Collection)

      Baptists baptize by immersion and they prefer moving water. Bridge sites were convenient, and baptisms could be held year round. Here, the Rev. Robert Colborn baptizes a convert around 1910 near the Stoutsville Bridge over the mostly frozen North Fork Elk River west of Stoutsville, Missouri. The structure, a Burr truss 145 feet long, was built in 1857 and razed in 1932. (Monroe County Historical Society [Missouri])

      The Romain-Caron Bridge, built in 1940 at St. Jean de la Lande in Québec’s MRC de Tèmiscouata, is typical of the province’s standardized “colonization” Town lattice design. (A. Chester Ong, 2012)

      Chapter Five examines covered bridges during our present time period, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. With the elimination of most bridges vulnerable to nature or deemed nuisances, covered bridges have become much rarer than even just thirty years ago. But, as the covered bridge became increasingly associated with notions of “a simpler past” and attained the status of nostalgic icon, a number of counties around the United States discovered that covered bridges could draw thousands of tourists for festivals, bringing economic benefits to many, especially in places like Parke County, Indiana, which otherwise have little industry or economic activity.

      By now, most covered bridges are well over a hundred years old, some up to 150 years, and fewer and fewer of them are up to carrying normal traffic. Whereas in the previous period, officials “progressed” by replacing the old bridges with modern ones, in this period every effort is made to keep the bridge “in some form” while still making engineering progress. In some cases, old bridges were bypassed and then became the responsibility of a park board or other entity as they sat