In the southeastern Iowa town of Delta, someone set fire to the 136-year-old covered bridge over the North Skunk River last month, destroying the span and jeopardizing Delta’s claim, proudly displayed on its water tower, as “Home of the Covered Bridge.”
Four days later, a fire was started on another Iowa bridge, this one located outside Winterset, the setting of the movie “The Bridges of Madison County.” But that one was only damaged, because a passerby grabbed a 5-gallon bucket from the trunk of his car and extinguished the blaze.
While no arrests have been made in either case, the arsons are the latest examples of what has become the biggest threat to the country’s historic covered bridges, whose numbers have dropped from some 15,000 in the 19th Century to about 800 today. In Illinois, there are just five historic covered bridges, down from more than 200 in the 1800s.
With a small percentage disappearing each year, some fear these wooden relics, which are admired not only for their visible link to the past but for their craftsmanship, are headed for extinction. And a federal project that was designed to help communities — often cash-strapped rural ones — preserve and maintain the historic bridges, is in jeopardy. The federal legislation that created the National Historic Covered Bridge Preservation Program expired Sept. 30, and the initiative is not included in a five-month bill extension.
“Once these relics of our past are gone, that’s it,” said Joe Nelson, president of the Vermont Covered Bridge Society. “It’s like cutting down a Redwood. You’ll never have it again.”
Many think the bridges are worth saving. In places like Henderson County (Ill.), chiseling initials in the wooden beams of its covered bridge is a rite of passage for the county’s 8,213 residents.
“Every kid in the county at one time or another has come here and carved his name in the bridge,” said Ron Bigger, an Oquawka resident who grew up near the span.
In Bureau County outside Princeton, home of the only historic covered span in Illinois open to vehicular traffic, the Red Covered Bridge, so named because it is painted a barn red, is a tourism draw and a source of community pride.
“It’s one of our three claims to fame here,” said Pamela Lange, director of the Bureau County Historical Society Museum. “We have two museums and we have the red covered bridge.”
Under the National Historic Covered Bridge Preservation Program, which was authored in 1998 by U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), many communities found the money to save the historic structures. Since 2000, the program has doled out $24.5 million, including $1.1 million to Illinois, to fund everything from restoration projects to sprinkler systems for bridges that are on the National Register for Historic Places or eligible for it.
“It’s been a fantastic shot in the arm,” said David Simmons, president of the Ohio Historic Bridge Association. “Projects that went begging for money finally had some.”
Though Jeffords is said to be determined to continue the program, its future is uncertain. It was not part of the extension of the large multiyear transportation bill, but talks are continuing on a new six-year bill.
“We’re still looking at the details of the reauthorization and the various programs such as the covered bridge preservation program,” said Justin Harclerode, a spokesman for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. “We haven’t settled on anything, yet.”
Support on the way?
However, a pending appropriations bill would set aside $4 million for the bridges in that same five-month period, which began Oct. 1.
In their 19th Century heyday, about 15,000 covered bridges offered travelers and farmers ways across streams and rivers nationwide.
Timothy Palmer, a Massachusetts man, is believed to have built the first one in the United States, a three-span bridge that crossed the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia in the early 1800s, according to Eric DeLony, chief of the National Park Service’s Historic American Engineering Record. Palmer covered it to protect the wooden beams from rot-inducing elements like snow and rain, saying the roofed structure would extend its life by as much as 40 years, Nelson said.
For the next century, builders tapped forests across the country to construct covered bridges.
“Wooden covered bridges illustrate the ingenuity, entrepreneurship and skills of American pioneers and millwrights and mechanics that were building these things,” DeLony said.
They also became a favored route for cattle, according to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. Skittish about crossing open spans, the beasts readily crossed covered bridges, leading some to theorize the structures reminded the livestock of barns, where they normally found food and shelter.
These days, arsonists seem drawn to the structures, perhaps because they are isolated and made largely of wood.
Last year, the Oquawka Wagon Covered Bridge, which sits about 2 miles south of the quiet Mississippi River town of the same name, was set on fire twice. Though the first blaze caused minor damage, the second one destroyed a section of the roof and a portion of one wall. No arrests have been made.
“I don’t know why anybody would want to do something like that,” Henderson County Sheriff Mark Lumbeck said. “It’s a beautiful bridge in a beautiful area.”
In 1994, arsonists destroyed the Wolf Covered Bridge in Knox County. Teenage boys, who were later apprehended, set the bridge on fire after taking LSD, authorities said.
The memory of the arson still upsets locals such as Jeralyn Wood, who was cleaning the shores of the river near the bridge shortly before it was set on fire. She frets that she may have prevented the blaze had she stayed longer.
“When someone purposely does that kind of vandalism, it’s just appalling,” said Wood, who lives in nearby Galesburg. “This is our heritage.”
The federal covered bridge program was set up to protect that heritage. Some enthusiasts say a suspension of it may be OK, because they worry that some firms have failed to use proper preservation techniques when rehabilitating the bridges. But others are concerned that the bridges will be more difficult to preserve without the federal aid.
“There are a lot of counties that have significant structures but they don’t have the funds to restore them, to preserve them,” Simmons said. “That’s why having that [federal] money available was such a boon.”
Security cameras on duty
In Illinois, the money has been used to rehabilitate structures such as Little Mary’s Covered Bridge in Randolph County. This year, a $289,735 allocation from the federal program will buy security cameras for the state’s covered bridges. Spans like the one in Henderson County, where sprinklers were recently installed, will have another layer of protection.
“It’s a sad day when you have to do things like that to preserve these things, but if that’s the only way to save them I guess you have to do it,” said John Allaman, a retired farmer and great-grandson of the Pennsylvania man who originally built the bridge.
In Delta, Iowa, it’s too late. Now that the Keokuk County Conservation Board has decided against rebuilding the structure, Delta residents grapple with the loss of a landmark.
“It was something that the entire county was proud of,” said Dixie Shipley, who owns Delta Grocery where reproductions of her late husband’s ballpoint-pen sketches of the bridge are on sale. “You feel like you’ve been robbed.”
