The Hills Covered Bridge

The Hills Covered Bridge. Wayne National Forest. , Once we had the most! , Ohio once had more covered bridges than any other state! A conservative guess is that Ohio once had over 2,000 of these bridges. Today, the national leader is Pennsylvania, but Ohio's remaining covered bridges are treasured artifacts from the past. This scenic byway (SR 26) features five covered bridges. If you have the time, stop at each bridge to learn more about this unique part of Ohio's cultural heritage., What is a Truss? , A truss is an arrangement of posts, rods, and timbers in a rigid form so that together they support each other, plus whatever weight is put on the structure.Covered bridge trusses employ a triangle or a series of combined triangles. Different bridge designers used different truss designs. Here are some of the truss designs you can see used on the covered bridges found along the byway., [Bridges shown:] , Long Truss , Wernwag Truss , Howe Truss , Smith Truss , Multiple Kingpost Truss, The Hills Covered Bridge , The Hills Covered Bridge was built in 1878 by the Hocking Valley Bridge Works and features a Howe truss. When it was built the bridge cost $13 per linear foot. It was bypassed by traffic in 1990., [Caption:] , The Cow Run Bridge (below) once stood a few miles upstream from the Hills Bridge. It was one of seven forme covered bridges, now gone, that spanned the Little Muskingum River.