Popular destination in Springwater
By Greg Seubert
It may not be the easiest place to find, but the effort will be worthwhile.
The Springwater Volunteer Bridge has stood the test of time, although it’s not even 25 years old. The 40-foot wooden covered bridge, which spans the Pine River about a mile west of Saxeville in the Waushara County Town of Springwater, and its adjacent park are a popular destination for weddings, family reunions, birthday parties or a little peace and quiet.
The bridge is a special place for town chairman Everett Eckstein, one of six men that helped build the bridge in a friend’s pickle barn.
He’s the lone survivor of that group that also included another town supervisor, Garth Towne, who passed away in January at age 88. Alden Attoe passed away in 2004, Lionel Peck in 2005, Norman Suranne in 2010 and Steve Slavik in 2012.
A covered bridge?
Towne helped get the ball rolling on the project after the state Department of Transportation condemned the existing bridge unsafe in 1989.
“He had gone off to Pennsylvania to marry off one of his daughters,” Eckstein recalled. “When he was out there, he saw some covered bridges with a plaque on it that said, ‘Patented by Ithiel Town.’”
Town (1784–1844), a prominent architect and civil engineer, developed and patented the Town lattice truss bridge in 1820. The bridge is constructed entirely of planks instead of heavy timbers used in other covered bridges.
Town turned out to be a cousin of Towne’s great-grandfather.
“Garth came back with the idea of a covered bridge,” Eckstein said. “Of course, we pooh-poohed it: ‘We don’t know anything about a covered bridge.’ We contacted the DOT and they said no way because it would have to be one lane.”
Eckstein, Towne and other board members heard about a recently constructed covered bridge over the South Fork of the Flambeau River in the Town of Fifield in northern Wisconsin’s Price County.
They headed to Fifield, a small community just south of Park Falls, to meet with the Fifield Town Board to talk about the Smith Rapids Covered Bridge in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.
“We called ahead and it was in the middle of a blizzard,” Eckstein said. “They showed us a video and gave us a set of blueprints. Theirs was a Town lattice truss, which this is. They spent the day showing us how theirs was done and we came back all pumped up. We could do this, but we still needed permission.”
Greg Seubert Photo
Helpful neighbor
Kermit and Shirley Jorgensen lived on the corner of County Trunk A and what is now Covered Bridge Road near the bridge and turned their backyard into what is now Covered Bridge Park.
He maintained the park for 14 years before selling it to the Town of Springwater in 2010.
“We wanted to buy it because we wanted to keep it in the public domain,” Eckstein said. “He had allowed the public to use it for 14 years and we didn’t want to change that. It’s just too beautiful.”
The town board had been told that a cement and steel replacement bridge would cost about $100,000.
One day, Jorgensen saw a man at the bridge location in the early 1990s after the former bridge had been condemned.
It turned out to be a DOT engineer, who was related to George Rasmussen, who served as Springwater’s Town Clerk for 41 years. Rasmussen had raised Jorgensen and his brother after their parents died of tuberculosis.
“Basically, he said, ‘You’ve got your bridge,’” Eckstein said. “If it wasn’t for Kermit, the bridge probably wouldn’t have gotten built because he was so willing.”
Work begins
Eckstein, Towne and the four other workers began building the bridge in Towne’s pickle shed. They completed the project in the spring of 1997 and the bridge was dedicated in June of that year.
“We bought the wood – Douglas fir – from Alsea, Oregon,” Eckstein said. “We never had to throw a stick of wood away. It was beautiful stuff.”
The six men, who volunteered their time, didn’t know each other at the beginning, according to Eckstein.
The town raised funds for the bridge, which cost about $50,000, by selling T-shirts.
“My wife painted 150 T-shirts and sold them for $20 or $25 to raise money for the bridge,” Eckstein said. “The township footed the money. There were a few people that weren’t real happy that we were spending all this money on it, but I tell you what, I think it paid off.”
Semis brought the bridge to the site in pieces. Eckstein said.
Mildew has caused the color of the bridge to darken over the years. The only major damage came from a delivery truck in 2017, two days after the 20th anniversary of the bridge’s dedication.
Popular place
At least five weddings are scheduled at the park or bridge this year.
“What we’ll do is close off the road by Portage Road,” Eckstein said. “They have the park and bridge for two hours. My wife Carol and I will park cars for them and do whatever they need to get done.”
Thousands of people visit the bridge and park each year and many of them leave their name or a message in a small book in the park’s gazebo.
The Ecksteins are part of a Waushara County Master Gardeners group that maintains the park.
“People will come and have lunch here,” Eckstein said. “A lady who lives up the road just had her 95th birthday party here. We don’t charge for anything like that, just for weddings.
“It makes a lot of people happy and I think people realize this is something special,” he added. “We find love notes stuck in parts of the bridge. I read in there one day: ‘I had to bring my kids back. My husband and I were married here. I’m glad to see the park lasted longer than the marriage.’”