Larwood Covered Bridge

The Larwood Covered Bridge crosses Crabtree Creek right at its confluence with the Roaring River within the Larwood Wayside, a six-acre Linn County park near Lacomb. The community and bridge take their name from William Larwood, an English immigrant who settled at this confluence in 1888. Built in 1939 for roughly $7,000, the 105-foot open-sided Howe truss span sits at a geographic curiosity notable enough to have been featured in "Ripley's Believe It or Not!": a river, the Roaring River, emptying into a creek, Crabtree Creek, rather than the more typical reverse arrangement. Just downstream stand the remains of the old Gaines waterwheel, a homemade water-powered generator that supplied electricity to area farms before rural electrification reached the valley in the mid-twentieth century. The surrounding park, with its swimming hole, fishing access, picnic tables, and a separate wooden pedestrian footbridge over the Roaring River, has made Larwood one of the most-visited and most-photographed covered bridge sites in the Willamette Valley, a frequent backdrop for wedding and portrait photography. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and repaired in 2002, the bridge remains open to both vehicle and pedestrian traffic on Fish Hatchery Road.