Neal Lane Covered Bridge

The Neal Lane Covered Bridge, also known as the South Myrtle Creek Bridge, carries Neal Lane over South Myrtle Creek near the town of Myrtle Creek and holds a unique engineering distinction: it is the only covered bridge in Oregon built on a kingpost truss, a simple triangular design more commonly seen in small farm and footbridges than in the state's typically longer Howe truss covered spans. Built by Douglas County for a mere $1,000, it is also one of the shortest covered bridges in the state at 42 feet. Its exact construction date is a genuine point of dispute among historians: the widely cited reference "Oregon's Covered Bridges" gives 1929, a date supported by a man who claimed to have worked on the bridge as a young laborer, while the Oregon Department of Transportation and "Historic Highway Bridges of Oregon" place its construction in 1939 under county engineer Floyd C. Frear and bridge foreman Homer Gallop. The bridge was formally documented by the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER No. OR-126), which produced eleven photographs, five measured drawings, and six pages of written data, and it underwent a renovation in 2015. The Neal Lane Bridge remains open to vehicle traffic today, carrying a five-ton weight limit on its narrow rural lane.