Wimer Bridge

The Wimer Bridge carries a single lane of traffic over Evans Creek, a tributary of the Rogue River, in the small community of Wimer, and is the only one of Jackson County's four historic covered bridges still open to everyday vehicle traffic. The crossing's history runs deeper than the current structure: an earlier covered span had stood at this site since 1892, built by J.W. Osbourne, before the Hartman Brothers of Jacksonville, associated with several other Jackson County bridges, replaced it in 1927 with a queenpost truss design featuring flying buttresses. That 1927 bridge met a dramatic end on July 6, 2003, when decades of decay in the bottom chord at a panel point on the upstream truss gave way and the bridge collapsed forty feet into Evans Creek while people were driving and walking across it, injuring three people in the fall. The community's response became the real story: residents raised $334,000 locally, which combined with federal highway funds to rebuild a faithful look-alike using modern engineering, steel-reinforced trusses, laminated beams disguised as solid timber, concrete approaches, and durable shake-style roofing. The new bridge reopened exactly five years to the day after the collapse, on July 6, 2008, with a town-wide celebration and fireworks. Because the rebuilt structure is a modern reconstruction rather than the historic fabric that earned the original bridge its 1979 National Register listing, Wimer was removed from the NRHP after the collapse and remains delisted today, even as it looks the part and continues to carry a 10-ton load limit on its 17-foot-wide, one-way deck.