photo by: Gage Vota

The historic Knowlton Covered Bridge is being restored by Rider Construction LLC in Monroe County after its collapse in 2018. All of the lumber for the bridge comes from trees originally grown in Monroe County.

The Knowlton Covered Bridge, constructed in 1860, has long been a vestige of the past in Monroe County.

The span gained national recognition when, in 1980, it earned a spot on the National Historic Places list. But age and decay caught up with the structure in 2018 when it failed and collapsed.

Just prior to its collapse, Monroe County had a grant application in place to refurbish the bridge. The effort went out to bid with one company’s application coming in at about $1 million.

Monroe County Commissioner Mitchell Schumacher went back to the drawing board to attempt to reduce the cost and discovered that all of the wood the company would have used was white oak that would have come from Illinois, Kentucky and New Jersey, which raised the price.

“So we went back and they were trying to change the floor to pine and, of course you know, if you got a 100-year-old bridge, pine isn’t going to be the wood of choice,” Schumacher said.

Schumacher was working with the company on this issue in 2018 when the bridge collapsed, which left the project in limbo.

“Our assistant clerk’s husband is a timber person, and he said, ‘Hey, Mick, there’s enough white oak timber off the Old County Home Farm and we could have the Amish build it.’ So I called the engineer and I said, ‘This is probably a crazy idea, but what do you think about the county supplying the timber and having the local Amish laborers build the bridge?'” Schumacher said.

The engineering firm told him that in order to be able to have the local Amish laborers build the bridge, they would have to be certified by the Ohio Department of Transportation. Luckily, he knew the only Amish bridge builder that is certified by ODOT, located in Kidron, Ohio. Schumacher then made contact with the Amish company.

“He came down and helped us assess the trees that we would cut and instead of having the local Amish laborers do the milling and everything, since he lives in Kidron, he bucked and graded all of the lumber. He had a mill up north that was Mennonite, and our Amish sect here does not use rubber-tired vehicles, so we would have had to hire someone,” he said.

The Mennonite in Kidron cut all of the timber over a two-year period, due to only being able to cut it during the winter time as that’s when the sap drains out of the trees. Along with the lumber prepared in Kidron, the final 15 trees needed to build the bridge were cut from the Monroe County Fairgrounds.

Monroe County has a contract with Rider Construction LLC of Findlay, Ohio. The contract states that the completion date for the bridge will be March 2025; however the project foreman said he would like to have the bridge completed by the end of July.

“Rider is the premiere bridge building company in the state of Ohio. They just finished building the Hill Bridge in Washington County before moving up to Knowlton,” Schumacher said.

“There’s a whole covered bridge scenic byway through Monroe and Washington county on Monroe 26 that has six covered bridges with Knowlton being the last one to be restored,” he added.