Throughout the 19th century, covered bridges existed largely on a practical level. Designed and erected as utilitarian structures in a larger highway system, they had none of the romanticized imagery that have today come to be associated with them. But even with the passage of time, they exist on multiple levels, dependent on the perspective of the viewer. A civil engineer will immediately default to technical data, intent on assessing the viability of a bridge, while the hobbyist will find significant personal gratification in a bridge’s symbolic associations.
Twentieth-century Ohio was blessed by being home to two individuals who spent a lifetime cataloging the deeper meaning of the state’s covered bridges: John Diehl and Miriam Wood. Both brought their own individual perspectives to the effort. John had an engineering degree from the University of Cincinnati and systematically gathered exhaustive information on each known bridge; while Miriam took advantage of her Capital University history training to develop an archival research approach to the topic.
The Ohio History Connection Archives & Library is fortunate to house the collections on covered bridges assembled by both individuals (Diehl’s is MSS 1615 AV), and, after more than 130 hours of archival processing, Miriam Wood’s extensive collection, identified as MSS 8799 AV, is now available to the public.
Miriam F. Wood was born in Vinton County in 1929 and credited childhood trips through rural Ohio with sparking her lifelong interest in covered bridges. A longtime resident of Columbus, she began formally researching covered bridges in 1953 and eventually became nationally known as THE authority on Ohio’s spans. She authored two major volumes on Ohio covered bridges: The Covered Bridges of Ohio: An Atlas and History (1993) and Covered Bridges: Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia (2007), the latter co-authored with David A. Simmons. In addition, she was a founding member of the Southern Ohio Covered Bridge Association (now the Ohio Historic Bridge Association) and edited their newsletter, Bridges & Byways, for six decades, producing innumerable articles and countless newspaper articles.
In Ohio, county government—specifically the commissioners along with the surveyor or engineer—have historically determined the design, construction and maintenance of covered bridges. Consequently, Ohio’s 88 counties provide the overall organizing principle for large portions of the collection.
Photograph by Clark Tenney depicting the Seymour Covered Bridge in Ross County as the double-barreled bridge was being demolished in 1933. MSS 8799 AV.
Arranging Wood's research files in July 2024
The collection’s 13 boxes are divided into three series: research files, photographs, and professional papers. The research files include Wood’s extensive notes made while poring over county commissioner’s journals in hopes of documenting every covered bridge ever built in the state—surely among the collection’s major historical contributions. Photograph materials include those of Depression-era photographer Clark L. Tenney and those of Anita Knight, a gifted amateur photographer and another founding member of the Southern Ohio Covered Bridge Association. Wood’s professional papers embrace her correspondence with leading covered bridge experts, most notably John Diehl himself and Seth Schlotterbeck Sr., a one-time bridge supervisor in Preble County.
Taken with the Diehl collection, Miriam Wood’s newly opened collection will provide future researchers with unparalleled opportunities to explore Ohio’s rich covered bridge history.
