Few engineering structures—indeed, few historic structures of any kind—captivate the American imagination like covered wood bridges. Simultaneously sturdy and beautiful, covered bridges evoke the calm of a simpler age far from today’s bustling freeways. They are the subject of countless books, photographs, and paintings, and appear prominently in feature films, such as The Bridges of Madison County. Romance and nostalgia, however, often mask the substantial engineering achievements these bridges represent. It is precisely this embodiment of both the cultural and the technological that gives covered wood bridges their widespread appeal and understated significance. Covered bridges remain one of the most enduring and endearing symbols of the transportation landscape. The United States is home to about 800 covered wood bridges—nearly 60 percent of the world’s total—and an active network of scholars and citizens working to document and preserve significant bridges. Although Pennsylvania boasts more than 200 bridges, states across the nation, from Oregon to Wisconsin, and Ohio to Vermont, also take pride in their historic covered bridges. Sadly, some five bridges are lost each year to age, arson, flooding, and traffic. Even Madison County, Iowa’s famous Cedar Bridge was damaged by arsonists in 2002. In 1999, Congress authorized the Federal Highway Administration to study these endangered bridges and to develop plans to save and rehabilitate them. As part of this program, the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), a division of the National Park Service, began a three-year project to document the most significant of these structures. By showcasing photographs and detailed architectural and engineering drawings from HAER’s documentation project along with bridge-related artifacts, Covered Bridges: Spanning the American Landscape explores the many ways covered bridges criss-cross the American countryside and affect its daily life. HAER’s professional photographers captured intriguing images of structural details and produced stunning black-and-white and color portraits of bridges and their surrounding landscapes. The drawings include intricate renderings of engineering elements and exploded diagrams demonstrating how the bridges are constructed. The artistic quality of the photographs and the astonishing detail of the drawings draw attention to the beauty and integrity of each structure.

Contents	Five freestanding units with reproduction images plus objects in panel-hung vitrines
Supplemental	Docent material, educational resource list, speaker list, bibliography, promotional resources
Participation Fee	$3,500 for an 8-week booking period
Square Feet (Meters)	1,000 square feet (95 square meters)
Crates	17
Weight	2,410 lbs.
Category	History & Culture
Security	Limited
Shipping	Outgoing; host museum arranges shipping and pays carrier directly
SITES Contacts	Minnie Micu, 202.633.3160 (Scheduling) Katherine Krile, 202.633.3108 (Content)
Tours Through	October 2009

 

Dates		Host Institution	Status
3/4/06	7/16/06	The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA	Booked
8/5/06	10/15/06	Montshire Museum of Science, Norwich, VT	Booked
11/4/06	1/7/06	Museum in the Park, Chief Logan State Park, Logan, WV	Booked
1/27/07	3/25/07	Chico Museum, Chico, CA	Booked
4/14/07	6/10/07	Bennington Museum, Bennington, VT	Booked
6/30/07	10/7/07	Preble County Historical Society, Eaton, OH	Booked
10/27/07	1/27/08	The Barrington Area Historical Society, Barrington, IL	Booked
2/16/08	4/13/08	Parke County Covered Bridge Festival, Rockville, IN	Booked
5/3/08	6/29/08	Troy-Hayner Cultural Center, Troy, OH	Booked
7/19/08	9/14/08	Lane County Historical Society and Museum, Eugene, OR	Booked
10/4/08	11/30/09	River Life Interpretive Center, Skamokawa, WA	Booked
12/20/08	2/15/09	Altoona Heritage Discovery Center, Altoona, PA	Booked
3/7/09	5/3/09	Jefferson County Museum, Clancy, MT	Booked
5/23/09	7/19/09	The Gallery at 48 Natoma, Folsom, CA	Booked
8/8/09	10/4/09		Call for availability

 

None listed at this time. Please check back later.

 

2.1.06 New Smithsonian Exhibition on Covered Bridges Set to Cross the Country Media only: Stephanie Montgomery (202) 633-3120 Public only: (202) 633-1000 Few structures in America combine architectural ingenuity, economic necessity and romantic idealism better than the covered bridge. A new Smithsonian exhibition, Covered Bridges: Spanning the American Landscape, will celebrate these iconic structures and the individuals behind their development through photographs, architectural schematics and models. The exhibition will debut at The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg on March 4, 2006 and continue on a multi city national tour thereafter. Covered Bridges is being developed by the Historic American Engineering Record, a division of the National Park Service, and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES); it is funded in part by the Federal Highway Administration. Though they first appeared in Europe during the Middle Ages, covered bridges flourished in the United States in the 19th century, where they helped encourage the country’s economic development by way of a growing network of roads. The first covered bridge in the country appeared over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia in 1805, and by the 1870s more than 10,000 covered the American landscape as part of the country’s westward expansion. From the beginning, individual inventiveness played an important role in the proliferation of covered bridges. As the industry grew, individual builders experimented and adapted each other’s designs in hopes of finding a means to build stronger bridges with the least amount of materials. In addition to being visually appealing, the resulting structures were engineering masterpieces—both important factors in their survival today. Covered bridges grew in popularity among the general public in the early 20th century and became attractive subjects for artists and advertisers. They appeared in advertisements for everything from tires to thermal underwear, feeding the nation’s desire for nostalgia. In some cases, advertisers took their messages to the bridges themselves, creating enormous billboards on both the interiors and exteriors. Despite their appeal, between 1870 and 1970, 90 percent of the country’s covered bridges were destroyed by arsonists, natural causes and progress in transportation. Today only about 750 remain, concentrated mostly in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vermont, Indiana, New Hampshire and Oregon. Community leaders in these states have recognized their value as a tourist attraction, and they have become symbols of community pride and history. Perhaps no single person did more for the covered bridge in recent times than author Robert James Waller, whose 1992 book “The Bridges of Madison County” stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 150 weeks. The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) has been sharing the wealth of Smithsonian collections and research programs with millions of people outside Washington, D.C., for more than 50 years. SITES connects Americans to their shared cultural heritage through a wide range of exhibitions about art, science and history, which are shown wherever people live, work and play. Since its founding in 1969, the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) has been a key component of the Cultural Resources Division of the National Park Service. Like its sister programs, the Historic American Buildings Survey and the Historic American Landscapes Survey, the HAER program produces detailed documentation of historically significant sites and structures for a national collection hosted by the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. This documentation serves as a record of the nation’s built environment and as a valuable tool for the preservation and stewardship of some of the most important and most fragile cultural resources.