Covered bridges of Lane County: Historic charm meets costly upkeep

Every so often, travelers traversing Lane County’s rural hinterlands drive across covered bridges. Tires slip over wooden flooring as towering paneled walls cast shadows across the windshield.

It’s more than a novelty. It’s history.

Covered bridges in Lane County sprang up in the 1800s and early 1900s, when booming timber companies flourished. Timber barons needed sturdy wood-hewn bridges to haul log harvests off mountain roads and across creeks, rivers and ravines. The roofs and panels of covered bridges shielded the wooden undersides from the rainy, snowy Oregon weather, adding decades to the structures’ lifespans.

Through the years, covered bridges linked the region’s web of roadways, helping  timber towns thrive. Covered bridges popped up by the hundreds in Lane County: At one point, more than 400 bridges were in Lane County. Since then, old-school covered bridges have largely fallen by the wayside, giving way to modern concrete and steel structures. 

These days, 20 covered bridges remain in Lane County — the most of any county in Oregon and more than any county west of the Mississippi River. Lane County has nearly half the covered bridges in Oregon; the state has about 50 in all.

Each bridge is a portal to the past, reminding locals and tourists alike of the region’s heritage and history. 

Yet for the covered bridges that remain, the push to preserve them poses challenges. Without regular maintenance and preservation, the wood will rot, flooring will weaken and the bridges will fade away.

For a handful of bridges in the county, the search for a stable source of funding is particularly thorny. Three bridges are no longer on county roads where vehicles cross over them, rendering the structures ineligible for county road funding. 

Two of these, both near Cottage Grove, are structurally unstable and in need of repairs to keep them from collapsing. County commissioners recently approved an allocation of up to $500,000 to make needed repairs. It may not be enough.

The uncertain future of Currin and Stewart bridges is a reminder that even treasured historic relics require investments and maintenance. At each bridge, posted signs warn sightseers to not walk or climb on the bridges because they are unsafe — and disconnected from the road system. The spans that once connected each bridge with the earth are removed, creating a chasm to discourage passersby from walking or climbing on the structures.

For history buffs and enthusiasts, the choice is obvious: If covered bridges disappear, they will only remain in memories, faded photographs and creased blueprints. If covered bridges survive, tourists will come for selfies, lovebirds will embrace in front of them for engagement portraits, and communities will promote them to visitors.

And so the work unfolds in Lane County to preserve the bridges, but it’s work that comes with tough financial decisions.

A question of costs 

In certain cases, county officials face challenges scraping together the money to pay for covered bridge upkeep. Three of the county’s bridges are not on roadways in use, including the two that need repairs. Cars do not pass through them; in fact, they’re no longer connected to roads.

That’s good for sightseers who don’t want vehicles sullying their photos. But it’s less than ideal for funding. Because the three bridges are not on roads, they are not eligible for the roads funding that can be used for upkeep on other bridges. 

That forces county officials to find other funding sources to pay for bridge upkeep and maintenance. The three bridges no longer on roads are under the oversight of parks officials. But without a steady funding source, the structures have languished. Inspection reports, even from several years ago, report weakened trusses and holes in roofs where rain can enter.

“They’re in pretty poor shape, and that’s because it’s been about 40 years since any significant repairs have been made,” said Brett Henry, Lane County’s parks manager.

In a recent meeting, county commissioners approved spending up to $500,000 for repairs on the two bridges. The money comes from lodging tax revenues designated for tourism-related projects and programs.

The 3-2 vote had opposition from Commissioners Pat Farr and David Loveall. At the meeting, both pointed to the county’s budget constraints as reasons not to spend money on the bridges. Loveall also noted that the county would still have 18 bridges if those two came down.

But for supporters, each bridge is worth saving; they say the funding is a much-needed down payment that buys time as the county works on a strategy to maintain the bridges for years to come.

“The original $500,000 may not be enough, depending on the extent of what needs to be repaired,” Commissioner Heather Buch said in an interview. “So we need to find long-term solutions. But this was a bridge in order to work with the community and other interested parties in order to determine a long-term scenario.”

More money may be necessary. Henry, the parks manager, said preliminary estimates to restore the bridges run from $500,000 to $5 million. The county received that updated figure in the weeks since commissioners approved the $500,000. The high end of that estimate would cover more extensive work, while the low end would simply keep the bridges from falling apart. Before the county moves forward with the work, officials will get a more precise estimate. 

And the county would still shoulder costs for removal if it opted not to make repairs.

“The goal is for the bridge not to collapse, because if it collapses, then we’re looking at remediation and decommissioning,” Henry said. 

For another 14 bridges on active county roads, the county’s maintenance crew keeps an eye on them.

Work continues elsewhere 

For Todd Thomas, Lane County’s bridge and special projects supervisor, covered bridges are a sliver of the 430 bridges the county is responsible for maintaining. 

Thomas works with Mary Rothrock, a bridge and special projects lead worker, to plan a maintenance schedule for 14 covered bridges on county roads that traffic flows through. (Other entities, like Cottage Grove, take care of the other three active bridges.)

“These are just all built in wood,” he said. “That’s the huge challenge.”

There are practical — and symbolic — reasons for that. In the 1930s, when many covered bridges were built, timber was readily available.

And that was an era when the state’s timber industry was angry with the Oregon State Highway Department, the forerunner to the Oregon Department of Transportation, over its growing use of steel and concrete for projects. As a result, the covered bridges erected in the 1930s also served as a symbolic statement about the value of Oregon-grown timber over East Coast steel.

“Covered bridges are such a moment in time when we talk about Oregon’s history and timber industry,” said Larissa Rudnicki, an architectural historian for the Oregon Department of Transportation. “Folks were able to build these covered bridges with pretty familiar techniques of construction. And so I think that there’s a lot of local passion. A lot of counties, cities and communities take ownership of these bridges because of what they stand for.”

That ownership also demands a willingness to stick as close to the original design as possible when completing repair and restoration work. Most bridges are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, so the county has to follow rules to keep bridges appearing as they did in their early years.

“We can’t put a metal roof on this bridge, because it didn’t have a metal roof originally,” Thomas said. “It has to have a wood roof.”

Once every 10 years, each bridge gets a paint job. During that same time period,the bridges also get fumigated to keep termites and other vermin at bay. 

Other work is less predictable, but inevitable. Wood panels along the walls of bridges need replacement. Roofs need repair and replacement.

Whatever the job, one factor stays constant for Lane County’s covered bridges.

“When you’re working on them, people stop and take pictures and ask you about them,” Thomas said.

Cottage Grove reaps benefits 

In Cottage Grove, the desire for preservation remains strong. The city has a nickname: “the Covered Bridge Capital of the West.”

Locals advertise a tour of six covered bridges in the area, including the Currin and Stewart bridges.

Stephen Lawn, a member of the tourism committee for the Cottage Grove Area Chamber of Commerce, said the bridge sightseeing meshes well with other activities, such as hikes to waterfalls and trips to wineries.

“For a lot of people who come here, this is something really unique that they’re seeing,” Lawn said. “They can take a tour and see six of them in a little day trip.”

Each bridge offers a bit of insights about the community. The Chambers Railroad Covered Bridge, for example, went up in 1925. Lumberman J.E. Chambers needed a rail line across the Coast Fork of the Willamette, according to Travel Lane County’s website. The bridge was part of the rail line. Nowadays, the bridge is no longer used by trains, but by pedestrians and bicyclists. It was rebuilt and restored in 2011.

Lawn lives near the bridge. For many others, the bridge is a first-time sight.

“I see all the time all the cars with different license plates with different states and people stopping and checking it out,” he said. 

A national draw

Bill Caswell, a New Hampshire road engineer by trade, travels the country to view covered bridges. Caswell, president of the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges, came to Lane County in 2017 with a group of 40 enthusiasts.

In Oregon, he’s noted, the bridges are larger and sturdier than most on the East Coast, where they are more likely to be a smaller one-lane bridge. The reason: Oregon bridges needed to be able to withstand the heavy loads of logging trucks.

Oregon’s bridges are comparable to those in New Brunswick, Canada, another region where the logging industry influenced bridge designs.

Regardless of the location, covered bridges offer an opportunity to traverse out-of-the-way corners of the landscape.

“It gets you off the highway,” Caswell said. “You’re traveling through towns that you wouldn’t normally see” — places like Westfir, Cottage Grove and Crow.

Caswell said Lane County’s draw is that the region has so many close together. In some other states, bridges are spaced hours apart. 

And he added that Lane County isn’t alone in trying to find ways to maintain bridges no longer connected to the road system.

“A lot of states are running into the same situation where once the bridge is no longer part of the roadway network, there’s a lot of funding sources that it no longer qualifies for,” Caswell said. “So you have to start looking at historic grants or other sources.”

When repairs are skipped, problems multiply. For example, a leaky roof that isn’t fixed will only compound the problems, Caswell said.

“After a while, the rain seeping through that roof is going to deteriorate the wood on the inside,” he said. “ The roof is there to protect the trusses.” 

Caswell’s society formed in the 1950s, when about 2,000 covered bridges served travelers in the United States. That figure is now less than half — about 850, Caswell said. 

For the bridges that remain, whether in Oregon or elsewhere, buy-in from a local community is crucial for long-term preservation, Caswell said.

“We try to motivate people to be more interested in caring about their bridge,” he said. “But really what it comes down to is if the local community isn’t interested in preserving it, it’s not going to happen.”