Covered bridges have become major crowd puller in Cottage Grove

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Covered Bridge Brewing Group is well-known as an up-and-coming brewery. It’s also a flourishing cafe, serving locals and tourists in its new space in downtown Cottage Grove. As many people come to enjoy beer or cup of coffee, many also stop by just due to its queer name. Chrissy Chapman, business manager for the brewery, explained that so many people stop by just to inquire about the famous covered bridges of Cottage Grove. For this, lately they’ve started keeping tourism pamphlets on hand to give out.

“I would say that they’re just a really unique historical thing that we have here in the Grove,” Chapman said of the bridges. “It’s a cool tourist attraction, it’s a cool historical aspect of our town, and then people who didn’t even know they were a thing are getting educated and intrigued to check out more covered bridges that we have here in the state of Oregon.”

Oregon compared to other states, has over 50 covered bridges, most scattered across the Willamette Valley and in the foothills of the Cascade and Coast Range mountains. Covered bridges in rainy western Oregon were a useful way to safeguard bridges from moisture and rot.

Cottage Grove has six of the covered bridges in Oregon – one of the largest concentrations of in the state, and enough that the town has dubbed itself the “Covered Bridge Capital of the West.”

« Back to Page