Touring the Past

Touring the Past. . Powerful floods, heavy traffic loads, vandalism, and neglect have led to the demise of hundreds of historic covered bridges. As vehicles and logging trucks got bigger, covered bridges, such as this one, were built with wider and higher portals. Gradually, the price of constructing new wooden covered bridges exceeded the price of concrete and steel spans., Oregon's bridge building tradition dates back to the 1850s, and lasted well into the 20th century, long after these rustic structures were relics elsewhere. By 1925, there were approximately 450 covered bridges along Oregon's highways and country roads, and the state's highway department supplied covered bridge designs to local agencies until the 1950s. Currently, Oregon has more than 50 publicly accessible covered bridges, 45 of which are historic truss-type bridges. Today, new vehicular covered bridges are generally built to replace existing older covered bridges, thus ending a grand era., Lane County was one of the most prolific bridge-building counties in Oregon, and today it has more covered bridges than any others county, sixteen of which are on the National Register of Historic Places. Begin your tour of covered bridges here.