The 1932 Crawfordsville Bridge spans the Calapooia River near the community of Crawfordsville in Linn County, Oregon. This 105-foot Howe truss-type bridge with narrow slit windows on both sides of the structure was bypassed in 1963 and is now maintained by the Linn County Parks & Recreation Department as a pedestrian bridge across the river. Originally, the bridge featured rounded portals, but these were enlarged and made square to accommodate larger vehicles before it was bypassed. Since 1990, the bridge has been the site of a Bridge Day festival held annually in the summer. Interestingly, the bridge appeared in the 1976 movie "The Flood," immortalizing the structure on the "Big" screen.

The area of Crawfordsville was named for Philemon Crawford, who settled in the area and on whose land the town was established in the 1870s.

Little upkeep or repair to the bridge occurred in the 1970s. In 1976, crews involved with the filming of the television movie, The Flood, painted the span, and residents repainted some of the bridge’s interior in the early 1980s.

Afterward, growing brush, trees, and weeds began to hide the bridge, and in the summer of 1986, volunteers from the Covered Bridge Society of Oregon organized a cleanup day at the bridge site. In 1987, some $23,000 in materials and labor were dedicated to renovating the bridge as a project of the Community Services Consortium, a federally funded program that trained and assisted in the search for unemployed workers.

In the flood of 1996, the bridge sustained severe damage from drift, which tore through the side skirting and hit a floor beam. Several of the one-inch-diameter tie rods were broken or bent, leaving only two upstream tie rods and one downstream supporting the floor beam. The County received a grant from the Oregon Covered Bridge Program for $24,400 to replace four floor beams, supporting tie rods, replace one corbel, and paint the bridge.

The Crawfordsville Bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Located at:  N44 21.448   W122 51.633       -       WGCB #37-22-15

Photographed in May of 2025

Photos by Millard Farmer