Tue, Nov 24 2009
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Olin Bridge county’s only extant covered bridge with family name Olin family members take special pride in bridge, honor ancestor with covered bridge museum By CARL E. FEATHER - Staff Writer - cfeather@starbeacon.comStar Beacon In her lifetime, Naomi Bottorf collected anything and everything related to covered bridges: postcards, sugar packets, soap, jewelry, place mats, paperweights, ash trays, money clips, sun catchers, bells, magnets, puzzles, plates, pictures, newspaper clippings and hundreds of other items. She belonged to at least 15 covered bridge societies and kept every newsletter they sent her. Her husband, Fred, who died in 1981, was likewise fascinated by the bridges and would carve their images into pieces of shale he found along the river.
When Naomi died in 1995 at the age of 95, the family realized that the vastness of her collection was good material for a museum. Julie and her husband had inherited another aunt’s house at the top of the hill east of the bridge, and they, along with Barrie’s sister and brother-in-law, Holly and Brad Watson, decided to remodel the house and set up a museum there. Olin’s Museum of Covered Bridges, located at 1918 Dewey Road, opened in May 2003. At the time it opened, the museum was the only one in the nation devoted to covered bridges, but just a few weeks later, the Bennington, Vt., covered bridge museum opened its doors. Since then, a third covered bridge museum has opened, as well. The Olin’s Museum of Covered Bridges is a natural extension of the bridge, which is, in a sense, the museum’s ultimate artifact. Bottorf suspects yet another familial connection to this bridge. His grandfather was a stone mason, and Bottorf can’t help but wonder if he didn’t have a hand in constructing the original abutments of the bridge. “He would have been 23 at the time, and I can’t help but believe he would have been involved in building the foundation abutment,” Bottorf says. The bridge itself is attributed to a carpenter named “Potter,” who allegedly built several of the reliable Town lattice bridges in the county. Historical record is frustratingly silent on who had the task of building our cherished bridges. In the minutes of the Ashtabula County commissioners for 1867 and 1868, there are several references to “letting of bridge” contracts, but the recipient of those contracts was not noted, excepted in the case of the Clyde Bridge abutments (County Line Road), which were to be built by John Donahue. Regardless of who built these structures, their workmanship generally stood the test of time, floods and even the coming of the automobile with a little assistance. By 1958, the Olin Bridge was sagging and required the addition of a steel center support. Four years later, the same summer the Blaine (Green Hill) Road covered bridge was torched, someone tried to burn the Olin Bridge, as well. “Someone set a fire in the bridge,” Bottorf recalls. “One of the neighbors came along and was able to put out the fire. If it had been another 15 minutes, the bridge would have been gone.” By 1981, when Fred Bottorf died, the bridge’s exterior really was showing its age. “A lot of the boards were missing, and the roof was leaking,” Bottorf says. “When my father died, my aunt said why don’t you take any (memorial) donations of money and fix up the bridge. We thought that was a real good idea, and we did it.” The crew of nearly two dozen volunteers, many of them neighbors, whipped the bridge into shape in a matter of two weekends. They gave it a new roof, replaced siding boards, repaired gables, painted the ends and repaired/ painted guardrails. When the work was done, county engineer John Smolen presented them with a new sign for the bridge, one designating it as the Olin Bridge. “It officially became the first covered bridge in Ashtabula County to be named after a family,” Bottorf said. Four years later, the center steel support was washed out, and a concrete-wall support was built. The concrete structures do a better job of diverting the water and keeping driftwood from accumulating. Concurrently, adding a center support quadruples the lattice’s load-carrying ability. Six years after that, John Smolen worked his renovation magic on the bridge. The bridge was closed to traffic, and lower and intermediate chords were replaced. It received new floor beams, planks and siding, as well. 
More from the Covered bridge series section
Olin Bridge county’s only extant covered bridge with family name ‘First Covered Bridge’ fondly recalled Spring Street bridge tackled Gulf divide |
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