Schafer Farm Bridge

Schafer Farm Bridge sits on the Schafer family's roughly 1,600-acre ranch up the Satsop Valley near Montesano, part of a property that includes the old John Schafer homestead where Carl Schafer's grandparents settled in the area's pioneer days. Built in 1966 to cross a lagoon on the ranch, the 72-foot, 16-foot-wide covered bridge was constructed almost entirely by hand by Oscar Hegberg of Aberdeen, the ranch's head carpenter, using cedar cut from massive timbers for every piece of the structure.

When The Daily World profiled it in October 1967, the bridge was noted as the only covered bridge anywhere in Grays Harbor County — a distinction reflecting how rare true covered bridges had already become in Washington by the mid-20th century. Carl and Mabel Schafer, known for collecting unusual and interesting features across their expansive ranch property, made the bridge one more piece of local color on a working ranch already rich with pioneer history. It remains privately owned today, a handcrafted curiosity tucked into one of Grays Harbor County's most storied family properties.