Bridgeport Covered Bridge, Bridgeport California
Within a year of the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill at Coloma in 1848, the population of California tripled. The urgent demand for roads and bridges was initially met by the establishment of privately financed ferries, turnpikes, and toll bridges. In 1850, John T. Little of Castine, Maine, built California's first covered bridge at Salmon Falls. By 1860, there were at least one hundred toll bridges in the gold mining region of California. The majority of these were timber truss bridges and, presumably, many of them were covered. Over time, however, the covered bridges were replaced with new structures, or lost to floods, fires, vandalism, neglect, or decay. By 1938 there were still thirty covered bridges in California. That number
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