History_Of_Covered_Bridges

History Of Covered Bridges Bridges have come a long way since their early history. Today bridges can be hundreds of feet high and can allow us to move across rivers unimaginable in the early days. It all started by the necessity to move supplies, goods, and people across rivers and streams. Ferries and barges were adequate for the movement and transportation of these things at the time. However, as the population grew and trade increased, the development of bridges was a must. Early bridges were simply logs stretched across supporting timbers. The span of the bridge was limited to the length of the supporting timber. As development continued, builders soon learned to create longer spans by using trusses, arches, and joined stringers. Like many other 18th century structures, these bridges were made almost entirely of wood. This created a problem. The joints of these bridges would soon deteriorate when exposed to the harsh elements of nature. Something had to be done so that the bridges would last longer because they were a great necessity. Building materials would have to be changed or the bridges would need to be protected one way or bridges, bridge, covered, built, over, soon, king, godwin, until, today, result, past, now, feet, century, across, work, wood, winterset, way, trusses, transportation, total, time, throughout, things, supporting, spans, south, rivers, river, renovated, protected, new