Hayden Bridge

The Hayden Bridge crosses the Alsea River about two miles west of the community of Alsea, on Hayden Road just south of Highway 34, and is one of only seven Oregon covered bridges surviving from before 1920, making it one of the very oldest still-standing covered spans in the state. Built in 1918, the 91-foot Howe truss bridge represents the earliest wave of standardized truss designs the Oregon Highway Department began distributing to counties following a 1915 bridge-oversight law, and it is the sole survivor of a small cluster of nearby Alsea-area crossings that have otherwise been lost to time. Its flared board-and-batten siding and daylighting window strip earned its photograph a turn as English Wikipedia's "Picture of the Day" on March 8, 2023. The bridge has faced real modern hazards: in 2006 a logging truck crashed into the structure, forcing a closure for repairs, a vivid illustration of the tension between a fragile century-old wooden bridge and the log-truck traffic that still moves through Coast Range timber country. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 29, 1979, the historically single-lane vehicle crossing has carried posted weight, height, and width limits for years, and Benton County has an active bridge replacement project underway that will eventually convert the historic span to pedestrian-only use once a new adjacent bridge is completed.