Wendling Covered Bridge

The Wendling Bridge crosses Mill Creek near the site of the former lumber town of Wendling, close to Marcola in the Mohawk Valley northeast of Springfield. Built in 1938, the 60-foot Howe truss span is one of the smaller bridges in Lane County's collection, reflecting Mill Creek's modest width at the crossing point. The town of Wendling itself, once a bustling company mill town built by the Booth-Kelly Lumber Company in the early 1900s, had largely been dismantled and its buildings removed or relocated by the 1940s, leaving the covered bridge as one of the few physical remnants connecting the present-day landscape to the area's lumber-era history. The bridge continued to serve the sparse rural traffic that remained in the area after the town's decline, and has been maintained by Lane County through routine inspections and repairs. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 29, 1979, the Wendling Bridge remains open to vehicle traffic and stands today as a quiet, little-visited historic marker of a Lane County company town that has otherwise all but disappeared.