Horse Creek Covered Bridge

The Horse Creek Covered Bridge in Myrtle Creek's Millsite Park has lived two lives. It began in 1930 as a working bridge carrying Horse Creek Road over Horse Creek, a McKenzie River tributary near McKenzie Bridge in Lane County. That original structure, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, was bypassed by a concrete span in 1968 and served pedestrians for nearly two more decades before being dismantled in 1987. Rather than being lost entirely, its salvaged timbers were split between two Oregon towns: Cottage Grove used a portion to build a small covered bridge in a local park, while the remainder traveled south to Myrtle Creek in 1990, where they were reassembled into the current 105-foot pedestrian footbridge providing access from a parking area into Millsite Park. The reconstructed span preserved distinctive Lane County "S-curve" eave brackets and a side viewing window originally meant to let travelers watch for oncoming traffic on the single-lane road it once carried. Because the structure was dismantled and rebuilt at an entirely new site for a new purpose, it lost its original NRHP listing even as its historic materials live on in this new form, giving Douglas County a rare piece of Lane County covered bridge heritage.