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The Woodard Flume & Hebron Bridge
This replica of a covered bridge is located in downtown Cottage Grove. Courtesy of Katy Barber
[The flume] went right up the middle of the valley but when they started to put the dam in, of course, that obliterated that along with the Latham school and the little store and the few things that were down there at the bottom of where the lake is now. The government built a road for my father for the fact that they tore out the flume. . . . We had to build it in the winter when the water was out. . . . I remember one winter we worked up there in December every day but Christmas, but we got the road in. Twelve hours a day. A lot of work. I don't know what year that was, that must have been the winter of '48. Two structures epitomize the Cottage Grove area in the pre-dam period: the wooden lumber flumes that mills used to transport lumber from forest to mill, and the covered wooden bridges that still draw tourists to the region. An operating flume and bridge fell victim to the new reservoir. W.A. Woodard began logging the forests around Cottage Grove in 1905. He built a sawmill on the west side of the Coast Fork River and a ten-mile flume to transport lumber from the valley down the river to Woodard Lumber Company at Latham. Alongside the flume a cat walk allowed loggers to tend to the logs and prevent them from hanging up on one another. Flumes also provided daredevil lumbermen a quick, wet ride to the mill and children with a cool place to play. The company dismantled the flume and recycled its lumber before Cottage Grove Dam was completed. Marie Geer, whose husband was the last person to go down the flume, used some of the timbers for the sub-flooring of her new home.
Hebron Bridge. Courtesy of Lane County Museum Boyd Allen drove a log truck to local mills and often traveled through the Coast Fork valley. He knew the dam would soon be completed but he never expected engineers would stop him at the covered wooden Hebron bridge in 1943 to tell him to turn back with a full load of logs. He was able to convince the engineers to wait until he crossed the bridge a final time before they dynamited the structure in preparation for the filling of the reservoir. Covered bridges have since become a symbol of Lane County.
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