Sean C. Morgan
A low number of visitors during the annual Crawfordsville Bridge Day may prompt organizers to move the date of the event in the future.
Mary Jean Crawford estimated that about 100 persons visited Crawfordsville Bridge, where the event is held, by noon.
Overall, the event seemed slower than usual to many of those present.
“It’s real slow for some reason,” Sue Claasen said. “I think when we have a meeting, we have to set a date.”
The two weekends prior to Crawfordsville Bridge Day were the Oregon Jamboree and the 2000 Sweet Home High School All-Class Reunion.
There were a lot of things going on over last weekend too, Claasen said. “There’s just too much going on to have in August.”
Still Claasen and others enjoyed themselves.
Crawfordsville Bridge Day provides a chance for that community, including those who have moved away from Crawfordsville, to get together on the bridge and have a good time talking, eating and exploring the crafts for sale at various tables.
“This is good,” Claasen said. “And I enjoy it because we get to see people now.”
Still many were missed, “because they all been over here for other things,” Claasen said, and a person cannot be expected to come to the Sweet Home and Crawfordsville area for events with so many of them going on weeks in a row.
Shawn Daniels of Lebanon enjoyed eating some of the corn on the cob being cooked on a grill at the west end of the bridge.
He was at the event because Claasen’s “my great grandmother, and she always tells us to come,” Daniels said.
Crawfordsville enjoyed “just getting together with old friends,” she said. “There have been people through here that you haven’t seen for years on end.”
“I have to have this every year,” Thesa Morris of Crawfordsville. She works six or seven days a week, and it’s a chance for her to visit with her neighbors as she helps put the event on. She brings plants to Bridge Day to give out as prizes.
The event is held on the Crawfordsville Covered Bridge, the oldest of the covered bridges in Linn County.
It was constructed in 1932, Crawford said, and it’s the only one that is also a county park. There were a couple of other bridges before the existing bridge. One was built in 1913. She has a photo of that one. She has a photo from 1909 of the bridge before that, but she does not have a construction date for that bridge, nor does she know if there were any bridges before that one.
She and other Crawfordsville Bridge enthusiasts would like to find out. She would like anyone who might know more about Crawfordsville’s covered bridges to contact here. She may be reached at 367-8323.