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A covered bridge is a bridge with enclosed sides and a roof. They are often single-lane bridges. The bridges are frequently made out of wood. Newer ones are frequently made out of concrete or metal with glass sides.
Covered bridges in North America
Such bridges are found in rural areas throughout the United States and Canada, but are often threatened by arsonists, vandals, and flooding. In the United States, Pennsylvania has more covered bridges (more than 200) than any other state, many of which can be seen in Chester County, Pennsylvania and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They are also common in places such as Elizabethton, Tennessee, Lane County, Oregon Madison County, Iowa, and Parke County, Indiana. Parts of Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the New England states also have surviving covered bridges.
There are various structural designs used for covered bridges, such as the Burr arch.
Opened on July 4, 1901, the 1,282 foot (390 meter) Hartland Bridge, crossing the Saint John River at Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada, is currently the longest covered bridge in the world. It is a Canadian National Historic Site. In 1900, New Brunswick had an estimated 400 covered bridges, and Quebec more than 1000, while Ontario had only had 5. As of 2006, there were 94 covered bridges still standing in Quebec and 65 in New Brunswick.
A much longer covered bridge (5,960 feet) between Columbia and Wrightsville, Pennsylvania once spanned the mile-wide Susquehanna River, making it the longest and most versatile covered bridge in the world during its existence. It featured railroad tracks, a towpath for canal boats crossing the river between two canals on either bank, and a carriage / wagon / pedestrian road. The popular tollbridge was burned June 28, 1863, by Union militia during the American Civil War to prevent its usage by the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the Gettysburg Campaign. A replacement wooden covered bridge was destroyed by a windstorm a few years later. It was rebuilt as an open-air steel bridge.
Covered bridges are generally considered old-fashioned, and appeal to tourists, but the purpose is twofold: (1) covered bridges appear similar to barns and it is easier to transport cattle across them without startling them, and (2) to build a structure for weather protection over the working part of the bridge. A bridge built entirely out of wood, without any protective coating, may last 10 to 15 years. Builders discovered that if the bridge's underpinnings were protected with a roof, the bridge could stand for 70, or even 80 years. The existing covered bridges have been renovated using concrete footings and steel trusses to hold additional weight and to replace the original support timbers.Some covered bridges, such as the one in Newton Falls, Ohio and Elizabethton, Tennessee, also feature an integrated covered walkway.
Covered bridges in Europe
Famous covered bridges include the Rialto Bridge in Venice, Italy which is one of only three over the Canal Grande and a popular tourist attraction. The Bridges of Sighs in Venice, Cambridge and Oxford are also covered bridges.
Other bridges include:
- Bridge over the Saane/Sarine river, near Fribourg, Switzerland (Filzstift.Sarine Saane near Fribourg.jpg)
- Kapellbrücke, near Lucerne, Switzerland — 650 foot long, built 1333
- The Covered Bridge in Lovech, Bulgaria — built 1874
- Logic Lane covered bridge in Oxford, England — built 1904
Covered bridges in Asia
There are many covered bridges, called Wind and Rain Bridges in the Chinese province of Guizhou. These were traditionally built by the Dong minority people.
Taishun County, in the Zhejiang province, has more than 900 covered bridges, many of them hundreds of years old, as well as a covered bridge museum.*
Modern covered bridges
Modern covered bridges are usually for pedestrians, for example to walk from one part of an office building to another part, to cross railway tracks at a station, or in a shopping center on an elevated level, crossing a road. See also skyway.
Glass-walled covered bridges are rather common at American airports, and some of those bridges can be found at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City.
Also, some highway bridges, such as the George Washington Bridge, have lower decks for additional capacity, and those decks, while generally open on the sides, can be enclosed with plastic from time to time during construction, thus rendering the lower decks as partially covered bridges.
Covered bridges in fiction
North American covered bridges received much recognition as a result of the success of the novel, The Bridges of Madison County written by Robert James Waller and made into a Hollywood motion picture starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood.
The fictional rural town portrayed in the 1988 film Beetlejuice features a covered bridge. It provides the scene near the beginning of the film, in which the protagonists (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) crash their car through the wall of the bridge and plunge into the river below.
A covered bridge is also featured in the 1999 film Sleepy Hollow, in a suspense-filled scene depicting an encounter between main character Ichabod Crane (played by Johnny Depp) and the main villain, The Headless Horseman (played by Christopher Walken).
In the early 20th century, covered bridges were sometimes nicknamed "kissing bridges", as the cover allowed seclusion for couples to kiss each other.
Gallery of Covered Bridges
See also
- List of Lancaster County covered bridges (Pennsylvania)
- List of Michigan covered bridges
- Pisgah covered bridge One of North Carolina's last remaining covered bridges.
- Gallery road
- Tubular bridge
- Jetway
External links
- List of covered bridges in North America
- "10 great places to cross that covered bridge." USA Today. September 9, 2004.
- Covered Bridges Recorded by Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER)
- Doe River Covered Bridge at Elizabethton, Tennessee
- "Pennsylvania Dutch" covered bridges
- Covered Bridges of Parke County, Indiana, "covered bridge capital of the world"
- Rialto Bridge
- Oregon covered bridges
- Vermont covered bridges — VirtualVermont.com web page with information and photographs of covered bridges
- North Carolina Covered Bridges — Includes construction dates and pictures.
- New Brunswick Covered Bridges
- Covered bridge driving tours and pictorial essays — Mid-Atlantic & Oregon primarily
- Ontario Plaques — The West Montrose Covered Bridge
"Covered bridge"