County hopes to preserve 2 historic covered bridges near Cottage Grove

Presenter: Two covered bridges in the Cottage Grove area are at risk of imminent failure. Seeking help Feb. 3 from Lane County Commissioners, Stephen Lawn:

Stephen Lawn: My name is Stephen Lawn and I’m a resident of Cottage Grove, been there for 37 years and for nine years I’ve been on the Chamber’s Tourism Committee. And covered bridges are a real important part.

Cottage Grove is known as the ‘Covered Bridge Capital of Oregon’ because we have the largest concentration of covered bridges in that general area. Lane County also has bridges throughout the county, in probably all the districts here. 

Presenter: Commissioner Heather Buch: 

Commissioner Heather Buch: I am a huge supporter of the bridges and although it takes money to maintain them, there is an economic development piece to these bridges from the tourism that it brings to rural communities.

Rural communities continue to have issues with maintaining tourism for their economic base, given that they don’t have the same opportunities as metro centers for attracting big businesses to help maintain them. So they really heavily rely on tourism.

It would be quite devastating, I think, for the South Lane region to know that our board would not support maintaining the bridges, knowing that, as was stated, these are our heritage of Lane County. These are an identifying building structure that you instantly think of when you think of rural Lane County.

We’re talking about part of the identity of the South Lane district, and that’s no small matter. I understand that some of my colleagues are looking at dollars and cents. This is an investment in the economic base of our rural communities. It is an investment in the identity of our rural communities and their legitimate place in the county’s economic engine.

This is a first step forward in order to stabilize these two bridges and work with a community that’s interested in working with us to find solutions. 

Presenter: Lane County Parks Division Manager Brett Henry:

Brett Henry (Lane County Parks Division, manager): I believe within the state there are like 51 covered bridges and 20 out of those are found within the county.

The off-system bridges or offline bridges at one point were part of the county road system, and both of the Currin Bridge and Stewart Bridge were removed from the road system. So they’ve been open to pedestrian traffic.

We recently received a inspection report from an engineer that advised us to close the bridges to pedestrian traffic because of safety concerns. So we’ve removed the approaches from both bridges. And we obviously were very alarmed by the last inspection report. I think they classed it as an imminent failure. So we’re talking about having to stabilize these bridges immediately or structurally they’re just not going to last much longer. 

I think that it goes without saying that covered bridges are very important to the county. It’s part of our logo. It’s on our webpage, it’s on Travel Lane County’s webpage. It’s part of our character. And so I really want you guys to think about: What is our historic legacy going to be? And we have a chance right now to save two bridges. 

Presenter: From the Cottage Grove Chamber, Stephen Lawn: 

Stephen Lawn: So we take these bridges serious. I’ve been working with Brett for maybe two years. I think we started conversations for Baker Bay and the work that was being done on the levy and really appreciate that and improvements that have gone on there.

But then we’ve talked a little bit about the covered bridges and their conditions and how we can maintain them. We’ve done videos, we have brochures at our Visitor Center. When people report what they came to Cottage Grove for, it’s covered bridges. It’s far and away the top item listed.

I did a little research. I reached out to Travel Lane County and they feature a lot of covered bridge information for Cottage Grove and also for the county. And I just wanted to share something from the senior director of tourism marketing, at Travel Lane County.

So the following information on covered bridge information on the website: We have over 100 blogs on our website that mention covered bridges and over 60 web pages. They’re our centerpiece of Cottage Grove’s destination pages. 

And covered bridges have a role in content around romance, road trips, guided tours, historic landmarks, parks, city drives, holiday lights, cycling, and more. Even better, covered bridges are a year-round, all-weather attractions. 

So I’ve been working with Brett. Now it’s a totally different situation to stabilize these bridges and how we can work to bring them back and save them, and I think it’s going to be real creative on finding financing. 

I don’t have the answers, but I do know that this isn’t the first time that Cottage Grove has had a covered bridge in dire condition, you know, basically one strong windstorm away from crashing into the Coast Fork. 

They cut off access to the Chambers Bridge for pedestrians and basically it was, it was probably as dire shape as maybe more dire than Currin or Stewart.

The city and the community got together, stabilized that, and basically it is now one of our top points of interest for tourism. It’s the only covered rail bridge west of the Mississippi that remains, and if you’ve had a chance to go to the Chambers covered bridge and see what the current condition is, it’s an awesome thing.

I’ve talked, trying to get an idea from the past city manager on how he cobbled all the funds available. It’s going to be a little different economic situation today, but it can be done. And we’ve been reaching out to the National Preservation of Covered Bridges Association. A lot of people are concerned and want to keep these.

But these are not just heritage sites, they’re strong tourism sites, especially for the Cottage Grove area. You know, at Currin Bridge we also have the Stand By Me historic film thing there that discusses the filming of some scenes of Stand By Me in Cottage Grove. Right now we are working on promoting the films that have happened in Cottage Grove.

We have the 100-year anniversary of ‘The General’ this year, Buster Keaton and the great silent film, ‘The General,’ so the film, the covered bridge, you know, we’re doing everything we can to make Cottage Grove the tourist gem. We just finished a Main Street revitalization in historic downtown. We’ve got a new business opening up next Friday.

So this is an important part of being a resilient rural community. We don’t have all of the access to some of the big stuff here in the metro area, but I think we punch above our weight sometimes and want to continue that. 

Presenter: Lane County Parks Manager Brett Henry:

Brett Henry (Lane County Parks Division, manager): Stewart Covered Bridge, it’s about three miles east of Cottage Grove, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. That’s wonderful, but it still doesn’t qualify for any funding, any federal funding. 

It’s been over 30 years since there has been significant funding allocated for maintaining this bridge. So in I think 1995, there was a program through the county, which went defunct in 1997.

There was some funding allocated, I believe it was like $48,000 back in ‘95, and that’s the last time that they did some significant work on this bridge. 

Currin is kind of unique in that it’s the only bridge that was painted red on either side, so it has that distinction. Did mention earlier with Stewart, his chord failure, and the same thing with Currin.

So the chord failure is pretty significant and because they obviously attach eventually to the trusses, and when you take a look at both of the roofs, you know, there’s that truss style, but they’ve deteriorated over time. So that’s what we’re looking at, is again deferred maintenance.

And so financial considerations. This has been a tough nut for me to crack to try to figure out how we would be able to generate enough money to restore these bridges, which we’re talking into millions. And then how much we’re going to be able to actually over a long-term period have for regular maintenance and operation of these bridges.

And so last month working with the engineering and construction division, they hired DOWL, the bridge engineers, to conduct a technical report and provide estimates on what it will take and what it will cost to stabilize the bridges and to restore them. So when you think about stabilizing them structurally, that’s temporary.

And so that’s only going to last a little while. So we need to think more along the lines of what’s needed to get them in in shape or they’ll be in condition where we can maintain them. We don’t know how much it’s going to cost yet. The report is still happening right now as I speak. I think we’ll know a little bit later this month exactly what it’s going to cost to stabilize and restore the bridges.

But right now we’re just asking for stabilization. 

Presenter: Commissioners vote 3-2 to spend up to half a million dollars to stabilize two of the remaining covered bridges in Lane County. A comprehensive study is expected this month.