Nothing on this site gets more of a reaction than the old covered bridge — so this week’s trip into the archives goes back to the summer we nearly lost it.
On June 4, 2005, a falling tree dropped the 1900-vintage Salem-Shotwell covered bridge into Wacoochee Creek east of Opelika. A couple of weeks later I wrote up the Lee County Commission’s unanimous vote to try to save it — Carl Summers Jr. of the Lee County Historical Society just wanted somebody to cut the tree and get a crane out there before the timbers rotted. I also rambled a bit about Allen Woodall, my old boss at South 106, whose earlier plan to move the bridge out to Salem had been voted down, and about what that bridge was really used for by local young folks once the cars stopped crossing it.
Why it’s worth a look now: they did save it. The salvaged heart-pine and white-oak pieces went to the City of Opelika, and in 2007 the bridge was rebuilt over Rocky Brook in Opelika Municipal Park, where thousands of people walk across it every year without knowing it once spent a summer lying in a creek.
The original post ran on the Opelika Daily News on June 22, 2005: Salem-Shotwell Bridge Down.
