America's Covered Bridges. Ronald G. Knapp

      Preface

      Anyone who collects books on covered bridges and watches those bookshelves increasingly sag could legitimately ask, why yet another book on covered bridges? Granted, there are a lot of books.

      Only a few combine history, technical aspects, and a survey of existing bridges, the exemplary models being the works of Richard Sanders Allen, whose Covered Bridges of the Northeast, his first book, appeared in 1957. Allen thoroughly researched covered bridge history and technology as well as visited and photographed hundreds of bridges for a set of books that continued until 1970. Most books since then have been limited to states or regions. Joseph D. Conwill’s Covered Bridges Across North America (2004) is an exception.

      Many books on any bridge lover’s shelf are essentially photographic anthologies with captions. More recent ones are in full color and make for pleasurable reading. The earliest books devoted to covered bridges include two published in 1931: Clara E. Wagemann’s Covered Bridges of New England and Rosalie Well’s Covered Bridges in America. The first is replete with drawings and etchings as well as a readable narrative focusing on the social and economic conditions. The second is a fascinating photographic anthology of black and white images. Both include many covered bridges now long gone. It is significant that Wagemann’s 1931 book and its revision in 1952 were published in Rutland, VT, by Tuttle, a venerable printing and antiquarian publishing house whose history dates to 1832. In the more than half century since 1948 when the renamed Tuttle Publishing Company was formed, the firm has become the leading publisher of books on Asia. We are grateful that Tuttle is publishing our book, which echoes their pioneering interest in the subject.

      Increasing in number are books devoted to the technical aspects of covered bridges, especially bridge trusses. Thomas E. Walczak’s Built in America: Covered Bridges: A Close-up Look (2011) is especially valuable, including as it does numerous drawings from the HAER (Historic American Engineering Record) archive. Related to these are books concerned with timber framing and restoration, such as David Fischetti’s Structural Investigation of Historic Buildings: A Case Study Guide to Preservation Technology for Buildings, Bridges, Towers, and Mills (2009).

      What is our claim for more shelf space? While much information on covered bridges is already in print, there is a need for a broader humanistic approach to the covered bridge that includes both historical and technical information as well as a reappraisal of the place of the covered bridge in American culture. We have organized this study into broadly conceived “perspectives”: the covered bridge as a utilitarian object, as indicator of technological ingenuity and progress, as obsolete nuisance, and as a nostalgic icon and symbol of the past. When covered bridges first came to widespread notice in the 1950s, they were still plentiful but being rapidly lost. It was important to catalogue them and begin to understand their history. Sixty years on, our perceptions of covered bridges have changed drastically. While few are now being lost, we are confronted with a new challenge—how to “renovate” without destroying. Today’s engineers and timber framers are highly skilled in (re)constructing covered bridges, but more and more “authentic” historical bridges are sadly being lost to replication. We address this matter head on.

      Eight-year-old Terry E. Miller dwarfed by the massive 400-foot-long bridge over the Muskingum River at Conesville, Ohio. (Max T. Miller, 1953)

      The co-author’s father, Max Miller, began photographing bridges in 1953 and involved his entire family on this 1960 vacation in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. (Max T. Miller, 1960)

      So who is qualified to write such a book? Since covered bridges have no consistent place in academia, we cannot expect any particular group of scholars to step up to the plate. It is also true that today there is a dedicated coterie of covered bridge “enthusiasts,” people who spend goodly amounts of time and money “chasing” covered bridges, as Paul

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