America's Covered Bridges: Practical Crossings - Nostalgic Icons by Terry E. Miller & Ronald G. Knapp
Photographs by A. Chester Ong
4to. pp. 272. profusely illustrated. hardcover boards. dw. (near fine - some light shelf wear). Toyko: Tuttle Publishing, [2013].
ISBN-10: 0804842655 / ISBN-13: 9780804842655
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As many as 15,000 covered bridges were built in North America over the past 200 years. Fewer than 1,000 remain.
In America's Covered Bridges, authors Terry E. Miller and Ronald G. Knapp tell the fascinating story of these bridges, how they were built, the technological breakthroughs required to construct them and above all the dedication and skill of their builders. Each wooden bridge, whether still standing or long gone, has a story to tell about the nature of America at the time—not only about its transportation needs but the availability of materials and the technological prowess of the people who built it.
North American covered bridges were marvels of engineering long before modern civil engineering was invented. Early American bridge builders developed revolutionary new carpentry methods to join timbers into patterns consisting of triangles or continuous arches that resulted in structures rigid enough to span long distances. These systems, called trusses, were critical to bridge construction of the day and had to be protected from the elements by a roof and siding. Few people today realize that bridges were covered to protect the trusses—not the people using the bridge! The unprotected trusses soon degraded and the bridge would collapse.
Illustrated with some 550 historical and contemporary photos, paintings, and technical drawings of nearly 400 different covered bridges, America's Covered Bridges offers five readable chapters on the history, design and fate of America's covered bridges, plus related bridges in Canada. Most of the contemporary photography is by master photographer A. Chester Ong of Hong Kong.