McKee Bridge

The McKee Bridge spans the Applegate River about eight and a half miles south of Ruch via Upper Applegate Road, and stands as both the longest surviving covered bridge in Oregon at 122 feet and the highest above the water it crosses, roughly 45 feet. Built in 1917 by contractor Jason Hartman and his son Wesley on land donated by Adelbert "Deb" McKee, a stage-station operator, the bridge originally served a rugged mining road linking the Blue Ledge Copper Mine, active from 1906 to 1919, to Jacksonville, with an ore-hauler rest stop roughly halfway along the route where relief horses were stationed for teamsters. Its Howe truss design features flying buttresses and rows of open "daylight" windows along the roofline, letting light and air into the structure, an ambitious engineering feat for a rural mining road. The McKee family's presence in the area spanned generations, and in 1938 the McKee Bridge Store opened nearby across from the Grange Hall, growing from a simple supply stop into a popular café and community gathering spot in the Applegate Valley. The bridge carried mining and logging traffic until 1956, when it was converted to pedestrian use only, and faced a serious threat when rot and roof damage forced a three-year closure before a roughly $600,000 rehabilitation, funded through federal grants and community fundraising, reopened it in June 2015. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 29, 1979, the McKee Bridge now anchors the McKee Picnic Ground in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, a popular swimming-hole day-trip destination.