Jerry Rust deserves much of the credit for Lane County still possessing 20 covered bridges.

In fact, Lane has the most covered bridges (all built between the 1920s and 1980s) of any county west of the Mississippi River. The main reason so many were built in the county, according to Rust, a former Lane County commissioner, is geography. The county has several headwaters that converge into the Willamette River, and these smaller rivers are ideal for covered bridges.

Rust is fond of these bridges. He compares them to the temples of ancient India, a country he visited with the Peace Corps.

“In India, there’s a lake that has a temple with arches,” he said. “It spans across, and that temple looks like it’s floating on the water. I came home and I was struck by how that Lowell Covered Bridge out there on Dexter looked so special.”

In retirement Rust wrote a novel about the bridges. “The Covered Bridge Murders” is a historical fiction mystery where the modern-day protagonists solve a pioneer-era murder connected to a covered bridge. Early in the book, there’s a passage where a character explains his fascination with covered bridges; it mirrors Rust’s.

“People who live in a plastic, steel, concrete, and electronics world, trapped in traffic jams and pollution, are looking for fresh air and authenticity,” the character said. “That’s what covered bridges are, authentic. Every beam, every board, every plank, and every truss.”

Today, Lane County’s covered bridges are recognized as tourist attractions. But when Rust joined the Lane County Board of Commissioners in 1977, not everyone shared his enthusiasm for the bridges. He often butted heads with county road staff who preferred the comparatively low maintenance of more typical cement and steel bridges and wanted to replace them.

Both today and back then, Lane County maintained most of the covered bridges with gas-tax funds. But if a bridge is “off-system,” it’s not eligible for those dollars. This is somewhat of a catch-22, because the county will take a bridge off-system because it’s in poor condition.

Rust shared several anecdotes for how he circumvented that challenge to save most of Lane County’s covered bridges.

One example was the Dorena Covered Bridge, approximately 12 miles east of Cottage Grove. Rust said he was visiting the bridge when a group of seniors approached him looking for a public bathroom, and there was none nearby. After that encounter, Rust got the county to add a restroom at Dorena, making it a rest stop eligible to receive road funds.

Another example was the Goodpasture Bridge 25 miles east of Springfield. According to Rust, staff told the commissioners the bridge was in danger, but he didn’t believe them.

“I went up there and went underneath the bridge and looked (as a) log truck (passed),” Rust said. “That bridge didn’t twitch, didn’t move an inch.”

Rust drove another county commissioner up to the bridge and showed him the same thing. He was ultimately able to convince the rest of the board to preserve the covered bridge rather than replace it.

Rust successfully convinced the state legislature to set aside a share of lottery funds for covered bridge preservation. That bill also established the Oregon State Covered Bridge Committee, which Rust was the first chair of for “about 15 minutes” before stepping aside for famous former state Sen. Mae Yih, who was late to the meeting.

Today, Rust continues to serve as a covered bridge expert. He’s visited Qingyuan Covered Bridge Museum in China, and spoken in Indiana at the annual National Conference on Covered Bridges, which typically draws around 300,000 attendees.

In February, Lane County commissioners voted 3-2 to spend $500,000 in tourism funds to stabilize two off-system covered bridges. Rust actually disagreed with the decision. He said the county should convert the bridges into rest stops, like it did with Dorena in the past, and then spend road funds to restore the bridges and save tourism dollars to market the bridges.

However, according to Lane County spokesperson Devon Ashbridge, for the county to establish a rest stop, formally called a wayside, it must be “on a road with a lot of through traffic,” and the rural roads adjacent to the two bridges don’t meet that threshold.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in The Register-Guard and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

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Built in 1926, the Chitwood Covered Bridge, which spans the Yaquina River off busy Highway 20 near Newport, was in sore need of repair. The scope of the $1.22 million project included restoring the structural integrity of the 96-foot-long bridge, which features a Howe Truss design, while maintaining the original design esthetic that make it both a vital artery for local traffic and an attraction for covered bridge enthusiasts.

Before work on the bridge could begin, a parallel detour road and bridge had to be constructed. A tight in-water work window compelled Legacy Construction Inc. to use Lincoln County‘s existing 90-foot-long flatcar bridge. With the flatcar bridge in place, footings outside the ordinary high-water mark could be constructed.

Placement of the detour bridge was tricky. A large existing tree was not to be touched and a small shop at the foot of the bridge required a crane lifting the flat car roughly 30 feet over the landowner’s shop and 40 feet over the top of the existing bridge.�� To complicate matters, a flood event on December 19, 2014, made the detour bridge unusable. Legacy’s crews worked overtime to make the structure usable by Christmas Eve so that the homeowners on the other side would have access across the river.

Replacement of the bridge’s timbers also caused some problems, required Legacy to work with a Canadian firm to get old-growth, clear-grain cedar timber cut to specification, dried and prepared on schedule. Once dried, the wet season required the lumber, some of which was cut in lengths up to 26 feet, to be pre-painted in a warehouse rather than onsite. Hand-split cedar shakes topped the project and an existing guardrail system was replaced with a new steel-backed timber rail system.

The end result of the project was a full restoration with additional engineering reinforcement that will perform as both a dependable transit across the river and a little local charm for the community. With an eye toward adding to that charm, the exterior of the bridge was painted to match the original red�� of the structure and the sign above the bridge entrance, which lists the bridge name, its elevation and the distance to Portland and San Francisco – 139 ½ miles and 750 ½ miles, respectively – was restored.

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Project Team + Stats

Project location: Lincoln County, Oregon

Project cost: $1.22 million

Start date: July 2014

Completion date: January 2015

Owner/developer: Lincoln County

Engineer: OBEC Consulting Engineers

General contractor: Legacy Contracting Inc .

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