Collections Spotlight: Ohio’s Covered Bridges

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.

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.