Staats Mill Bridge: A Victorian Span on the Move

The Staats Mill Covered Bridge was built in eighteen eighty-seven to carry traffic over the Tug Fork of Big Mill Creek in Jackson County, West Virginia. H.T.

Hartley designed it and local craftspeople built it for a total of one thousand seven hundred eighty-eight dollars and thirty-five cents, every penny documented in the county records. The bridge used the Long truss system, patented by Stephen Long in eighteen thirty, a design of interlocking diagonal timbers that could carry heavy loads on a modest budget. It was named for Enoch Staats, who owned the mill and store nearby and also helped with construction.

Nearly a century later, in nineteen eighty-three, the old bridge was carefully dismantled and moved three miles to the state FFA and FHA camp at Cedar Lakes, where it was rebuilt over a pond. It is open to pedestrians today, a surviving example of a Long truss bridge.