Bridges of Cottage Grove, OR

After a few weeks at home recovering from our trip to Sequim to recover from being at home recovering from our trip to Europe and Covid..., we took a long weekend to Cottage Grove, Oregon. Why, you might ask. Well, Lane county where Cottage Grove is located is famous for being in covered bridge country, so we thought we'd go have a look about.

Above is the Centennial Bridge just next to main street in Cottage Grove.

 It is in pretty good shape, although to be sure, nearly all the bridges that were in good shape have been recently restored. The current version of main street flows along just next to the this bridge and uses a modern concrete and steel bridge to cross the coastal fork of the Willamette River. 

One of the things I learned visiting ll these bridges is why the bridges are covered. Since the cheap and plentiful building material is wood here where logging was and is such a central part of the economy, the bridges were built of wood. However, since it also rain a lot (apparently more than in Snohomish...more on this in a later post), the bridges were covered to protect the wood so the bridge would last longer.

These days, the Centennial Bridge is only open to pedestrians. It was a nice respite from the near constant rain during our visit.

Cottage Grove also has an uncovered, steel bridge that crosses the same river a short ways downstream. This one is called the Swinging Bridge.

Yet farther downstream is the Chambers Bridge. This is a restored bridge with an interesting history. It was built by a fellow named Chambers to connect the railway to sawmill. Logs in, boards out. The engine that crossed this bridge was modified to shorten the stack to fit inside. You can see that this is much taller and wider than the Centennial. Today it is only open for foot traffic.

The decking of the bridge has indications of where the original rails were placed.

Characteristic of many of the bridges we saw (and more are coming, rest assured) are the 10-12 inch square beams that chris-cross on the sides and the iron rods that connect the upper and lower parts of the support structure. We read that by the early '20's (perhaps earlier), there were rules for how to build a covered bridge hence the uniformity in their construction.