Ohio set to have nation’s longest covered bridge

Iowa’s Madison County has Hollywood fame. Pennsylvania has the most. And when the autumn leaves turn colors, the Northeast may have the prettiest.

But by next year, this gritty northeastern Ohio county will boast the longest covered bridge in the country.

“Well, somebody has to be No. 1,” said Betty Morrison, who heads the Ashtabula County Covered Bridge Festival to be held for the 23rd year this October.

As long as two football fields, Bridge No. 17 -- it has yet to be named -- will be about one-third longer than the current record holder, which spans the Connecticut River between New Hampshire and Vermont. It was built 140 years ago.

This one, to be completed by next fall at a cost of $7.5 million, will be spanking new, down to tiny pieces of treated timber held together by adhesive. About 1,800 vehicles a day, including tractor-trailers, will cross the bridge.

“Modern technology makes it possible to build new like old,” said John Smolen, whose engineering firm is at the vanguard of a renaissance in covered-bridge building in Michigan and Ohio.

Covered bridges were dominant long ago in rural America. But of the tens of thousands of bridges that once graced the national landscape, fewer than 1,000 can be found today. Many are in sad shape, reflecting the steady demise due to neglect, age and arsonists.

In this corner of Ohio, however, where a battered economy has left little cheer, saving old covered bridges and building new ones have taken on unusual momentum.

When an aging steel bridge over the Ashtabula River nearly collapsed in recent years, county engineers knew the replacement could only be a covered one.

That’s because since 1983, Ashtabula -- led by Smolen, who retired as county engineer in 2002 -- has built or rehabilitated 16 covered bridges, the most of any one place in the nation.

“You don’t knock down the Statue of Liberty just because it’s old, so why get rid of covered bridges?” asked Smolen, who now runs Smolen Engineering, a private firm dedicated to covered-bridge building.

But in building one from scratch, Smolen knows he’s going against conventional bridge building that uses far less costly steel and concrete. Smolen’s argument:

Covered bridges can last twice as long -- about a century -- as conventional ones. Maintenance costs are minimal. Winter weather only enhances the timber, and salting the covered-bridge road surface preserves it rather than causing deterioration. Still, covered bridges require more elaborate design and far more money. At $7.5 million -- $5 million of it from federal bridge-building funds -- Bridge No. 17 costs 10 times more than a steel one would.

Seven stories higher than the old bridge, the covered one will boast an unusual feature: a walkway over the center span for visitors, accessed by spiral stairways at either end of the bridge.

“We recognize that this will draw quite a number of tourists, and this is a way we can accommodate them,” said Morrison, who conducts tours of the county’s covered bridges.

Now the conundrum is what to call it. It’s up to the county leadership. But Morrison thinks it should be named after Smolen as a tribute to his foresight and perseverance.

Smolen has another idea.

“The county should sell the name,” he said. “It’s too valuable ... to have it named [for] a guy like me.”