Roberta McKern
“You know, this would probably make a good subject for an article,” an East Linn Museum volunteer said as she held up a thick, green plastic notebook.
The item had come with Ben Dahlenburg’s scale model of the Weddle Covered Bridge, brought in by his cousin, Steve Rice. The model immediately went on view atop a display cabinet, but the notebook drew less attention.
“This is really interesting,” the volunteer added, tapping the latter.
“People got into a fight and some were hauled off to jail.”
There’s nothing like potential violence to stir interest, so Weddle Bridge became the subject of this article, which is based on some of the notebook’s contents: notably, the histories of the bridge’s demolition and reconstruction in Sweet Home’s Sankey Park between the 1980s and 1990.
Ben Dahlenburg was the Sweet Home High School shop teacher at the time, and the model he’d donated was meant to show those assembling the bridge where pieces and parts joined together. The model has a finished-looking portal, which gives way to the bridge’s structural parts, the beams, braces and support rods forming the trusses.
Keep the trusses and chords in mind, because they feature primarily in the bridge’s reconstruction. The trusses actually comprise its lattice-work sides while the chords are formed by the top and bottom beams, which hold the intermediate supports together. Each chord comes as a pair of beams, and the rods and braces are held between them and bolted together to form geometrically shaped lattice-work.
It’s important to remember these chords, because when two or three broke over time, it doomed the bridge. One came apart when a peppermint truck crossed the bridge (which raises the question, “Was it a red- and white-striped truck?”). When another broke with a loud crack like a gunshot, the bridge sank 18 inches and was propped up by a scaffold.
It was a final chord, and the Linn County Commissioners voted 3 to 1 to have the bridge destroyed.
However, a recent trip to Sankey Park showed the revitalized bridge sitting serenely above gurgling Ames Creek.
The open-sided covered bridge is known as a Howe, named after William Howe, who patented the design in the 1840s. Its use of double trusses marked its uniqueness.
As wooden bridges, Howe’s gained great popularity, but by 1930, when Oregon adopted them as standard, they weren’t being built in many places other than the Pacific Northwest where there was still enough tall timber to satisfy the 120 feet needed for some of the beams. Abutments were used in this one-size-fits-all-scheme to account for shorter or wider areas.
Therefore, the aging Weddle already occupied an historic niche as a sample of a disappearing type of bridge. Made of yellow pine, redwood and Douglas fir, these structures had short lengths of use. Covering them extended their usefulness; still, 10, 20, or 30 years were as long as they were expected to last.
So let’s look at the Weddle’s history.
It came as a surprise to learn it wasn’t local. The Weddles had settled in the Holley area in 1876, when Josiah, his wife, Jane Malinda, and their six children arrived. They are well-represented by large portraits (of the parents and three sons, plus one daughter-in-law) hanging in the museum.
However, the Weddle did not originate there. It’s an import, named for a farmer (more on him later), that stood west of Scio and crossed Thomas Creek. It was built in 1937 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, when it was bypassed by a concrete bridge a quarter of a mile downstream. So by the time it became the center of a ruckus, it had already been replaced.
Getting in step with much of the nation, Oregon had begun to retire its wooden bridges, replacing them with those made of steel or concrete.
This created groups like the Linn County Covered Bridge Association, organized by people who wanted to preserve the structures for historical, aesthetic and educational reasons. Much of the material in Ben Dahlenburg’s notebook reflects this organization. And no wonder their motto may well have been, “Linn County, spare that bridge.”
In 1987, county commissioners decided the old Weddle must go. Scaffolding held up the bridge after the final chord’s loud cracking, plus dry rot, had become a hazard. It was on the National Register of Historic Places, true, but it also no longer made up part of the generally traveled roadway, even if it acted as a footbridge.
And, the commissioners claimed, its deterioration posed a hazard to the new concrete bridge downstream. The rainy season would come, and if the Weddle succumbed to the expected yearly flooding, its debris, borne by Thomas Creek’s rising waters, could threaten the new structure.
The “save the bridge” people expected a hearing. But the commissioners bypassed that by declaring an immediate need for removal. Hemming and hawing followed.
The Linn County Covered Bridge Association had allies in the Jordan Bridge Company, so named for its preservation of the so-named structure near Stayton. It would take over the Weddle, but the Linn group wanted it to remain within county boundaries.
What to do, the Jordan group said, was mark the pieces of the Weddle as they were torn out, an x-y-z affair. This would make reassembling the bridge easier should a site become available.]
Another attempt to speak with commissioners availed not. One became testy. “I’ve voted to tear down the bridge three times,” he said. “That is final. Do you understand?”
The commissioners then tried to circumvent further LCCBA interference by putting out a contract, without the usual bidding, employing a Springfield outfit for the demolition work at $19,200. The bridge’s wood would go to a nearby farmer who had wanted it gone, anyway.
So now for the fracas.
On demolition day, a group of bridge aficionados went down to say goodbye. To their horror, they found a crew hard at work. No x-y-z labeling of parts, which the foreman had heard nothing about. The metal roof was coming off in shrieking pieces. Men with chainsaws cut indiscriminately wherever they chose, making firewood of posts and rafters.
At one point, as boards were being ripped from one end of the bridge, LCCBA members tried to hammer them back on at the other. When a backhoe appeared, a man leading the preservation group jumped into the bucket, preventing its use.
Someone called the Sheriff’s Office. Deputies arrived and handcuffed at least one man now out of the backhoe bucket, and three women. They were taken to the county jail and booked for disorderly conduct. “Treated like ordinary criminals,” one person wrote, describing the incident.
There was some amelioration. The trusses were to be saved and some x-y-z lettering was applied. Whether those charged with disorderly conduct went to trial is not clear. Likely, they were felt to have been warned. The saved bridge parts, basically of framework only, sat in storage in a county warehouse for about two years.
In the meantime, the timber industry suffered. Here in Sweet Home and roundabout, mills closed, and the future did not look promising.
One organization coming into being in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce called itself the Cascade Forest Resource Center. The nonprofit hoped to develop this area as a historical and recreation corridor with a logging museum and the attraction offered by the Foster and Green Peter dams and their reservoirs.
Back to advice from the Jordan Bridge people. When it comes to reassembling the Weddle Bridge, they told the Linn County folks, look for a nonprofit organization, not at government connections, to avoid getting bogged down in red tape. And here was the Forest Resource group. As a result, connections were made and Sweet Home inherited a pile of pieces of a nearly destroyed bridge.
The town had already shown it could establish a local museum with the creation of the East Linn Museum. Plus, the bridge organizers had local heroes in people like Ben Dahlenburg and Don Menear. Dahlenburg passed carpentry knowledge to his students by having them build houses, and Menear had helped found the museum. Others in the area worked in mills and logging, bearing knowledge and equipment for handling and building with big chunks of uncut timber and lumber.
Those who undertook raising the Weddle like a phoenix from ashes – or, in this case, dry rot – felt they could rely on volunteer willingness to raise funds and donate time, materials and labor. In the brick circle around the Sankey Park flagpole, we see one fundraising project: selling name-stamped bricks to people, then arranging and cementing them in the circle gave permanency to the bridge’s financial support.
Putting the old Weddle back together proved to be a two-year project with Sankey Park as its site, backed up against the high school’s property, which facilitated student participation. Other times, older volunteers took over. Dahlenburg figured out how to make the trusses on flat ground. Then they were lifted by a crane and two forklifts over Ames Creek and pulled into place.
As the bridge neared completion, it was supplied by two things uncommon to working wooden-covered bridges: electricity, so it might be used at night; and a fire alarm. Historically, fire posed a major threat.
In keeping with this bridge as an object of transition, one of the Willamette Industries sawmill’s last jobs was to cut beams for it.
Beams and braces from the mill as it faced its own demolition formed some of the bridge’s rafters. At the same time, as interest grew in the bridge’s reincarnation, some funding came as grant money from the newly arising Oregon Lottery.
When we look at the Weddle Bridge in Sankey Park as it spans narrow Ames Creek, it can remind us of a lady of uncertain age finally at home in a strange place to which she retired. Her white paint is thick, hiding signs of age, we might think. On the other hand, its thickness may also reflect the use of fire retardants. And her floorboards definitely show wear, but it’s been 32 years since her dedication.
That August day proved a hot one. Dignitaries came to speak of the bridge’s future and educational opportunities. Others sought shelter in the coolness of its interior. They marked the bridge’s successful use as a place for civic and organizational activities.
According to one account in the Dahlenburg scrapbook, the bridge outside Scio on Thomas Creek, where the Weddle Bridge originally stood (it might have been the Weddle), had been called the DeVaney, named for a nearby farmer who fed his cows in its shelter during inclement weather. And in Sankey Park the bridge maintained its purpose as a shelter, although it’s used for foot traffic only and will no longer be vulnerable to heavy vehicles like peppermint trucks.
Though the Weddle remains in Sankey Park, things have changed over the last 32 years. The Cascade Forest Reserve Center, for example, has seemingly disappeared into the past. The logging museum did not materialize, but maybe the East Linn Museum acquired some of its artifacts.
We have a fairly good logging section that includes some big blocks, pulleys used in the rigging in the past. They’re around back and have to be sought.
At this point, the feat of restoring the Weddle Bridge seems amazing. We thank Ben Dahlenburg for a chance to learn more about it. There aren’t many high school students who, when asked, “What’re you learning in school, kiddo?” could reply, “How to build a bridge.”
It’s hoped that the Weddle will be around for many years and that the Linn County Sheriff’s office will not be called again regarding its preservation.
The East Linn Museum will be holding another Rock Identification day with retired geologist Robert Rosé from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 10, at 760 Long St. Bring your rocks. It always proves interesting.
See more photos in our online gallery.