Pass Creek Bridge is a covered bridge in the city of Drain in Douglas County in the U.S. state of Oregon. It originally carried stagecoaches over Pass Creek before being moved a few hundred feet from its original location in 1987 and reassembled behind the Drain Civic Center.[1] From then through 2014, when the city closed the deteriorating bridge completely, it carried pedestrian traffic.[2] Pass Creek is a tributary of Elk Creek in the Umpqua River basin.[3]

Pass Creek Bridge
Pass Creek Covered Bridge in 2012
Coordinates43°39′38.8″N 123°18′59.5″W / 43.660778°N 123.316528°W / 43.660778; -123.316528[1]
CrossesPass Creek
LocaleDrain, Oregon, United States
Maintained byCity of Drain
Characteristics
DesignHowe truss
Total length61 feet (19 m)
History
Construction end1925 (1906); 1987
Location
Map

Although the official date of construction of the bridge is 1925, members of the Umpqua Historic Preservation Society say the bridge was built in 1906, according to Oregon Department of Transportation.[1] In either case, an even earlier bridge carried a covered wagon route over the creek at this same location.[1] The route, an 1876 extension of the Overland Stagecoach, opened between Roseburg in the interior and Scottsburg near the Oregon Coast.[2] Records from 1895 show a covered railroad bridge next to the covered stagecoach bridge.[1] The rail bridge then carried the Oregon and California Railroad,[2] later acquired by the Southern Pacific.[4]

The 1925 bridge carried First Street over the creek downstream of its 21st-century location behind the civic center. By then, the railroad bridge next to it was a steel truss structure built in 1906.[5] The 1925 Howe truss bridge had few notable architectural details and no windows,[5] although it had cedar siding and some hand-hewn timbers likely recycled from an earlier bridge.[2]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e "Pass Creek Covered Bridge" (PDF). Oregon Department of Transportation. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
  2. ^ a b c d Pettit, Daniel K. (2016). "Pass Creek Covered Bridge". The Oregon Encyclopedia. Portland State University and the Oregon Historical Society. Retrieved March 26, 2016.
  3. ^ "United States Topographic Map". United States Geological Survey. Retrieved March 26, 2016 – via Acme Mapper.
  4. ^ Cockrell, Bill. Images of America: Oregon's Covered Bridges. Charleston, South Carolina: Acadia Publishing. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-7385-5818-9.
  5. ^ a b Smith, Dwight A.; Norman, James B.; Dykman, Pieter T. (1989) [1986]. Historic Highway Bridges of Oregon (2nd ed.). Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press. p. 75. ISBN 0-87595-205-4.