Office Covered Bridge

The last covered bridge on our tour though the bridges of Lane County Oregon is the Office bridge.

From Wikipedia:

The Office Bridge (also called Westfir Covered Bridge^[1]) is a covered bridge in Westfir, Lane County, Oregon, U.S. crossing the North Fork Middle Fork Willamette River at the south end of the Aufderheide National Scenic Byway^[2] and edge of the Willamette National Forest. It is Oregon's longest covered bridge at 180 ft (55 m), and is one of only two in the state using triple Howe truss construction. It is the only covered bridge west of the Mississippi River which has a separate pedestrian walkway.^[3][4][5]

The small town of Westfir was a company town and this bridge connected the two to the lumber mill and mill pond. I suppose that since the folks who worked in the mill lived in town and hence, close to the mill (and were not well paid and thus, poor), they walked to work. To facilitate this, there are separate passages for the trucks and cars and for the locals walking to work.

The original bridge, built in 1941, washed away. This bridge was built in 1944.

In the image below, you can see the railroad bridge through the window farther upstream (downstream?) on the river.

Here, you can see both the roadway and walkway inside the bridge.

This is view looking back toward the mill site. Today, it is a parking lot with a picnic area along side.

Since the traffic was very light in the tiny place, I walked back across on the roadway so we could get a good look at the interior construction.