Mt. Olive Road Covered Bridge, Allensvllle Ohio
The Mt. Olive Road Covered Bridge was built in 1875 by George Washington Pilcher, a well-known Vinton County stone mason and builder. Mr. Pilcher was a Civil War veteran and was quite active as an itinerant lay preacher. He built the foundations for many Vinton County bridges, and along with his brothers, built the foundations for Cutler Hall at Ohio University at Athens. One unconfirmed story says that Mr. Pilcher might have been county engineer at the time he built the Mt. Olive Road Covered Bridge.
The contract for this bridge was originally awarded to a John Calvin for $6 per linear foot, and the masonry work was to be done by Mre Pilcher. For some unknown reason, Mr. Celvin made arrangements for Mr. Pilcher to do all of the work. Mr. Pilcher obviously favored the simple Queenpost truss plan which he used here, as we know of at least one other Vinton County covered bridge that he built using this truss type. The county commissioners inspected and accepted the completed Mt. Olive Road Covered Bridge on November 9, 1875, and paid Mr. Pilcher the balance due him, deducting $l for two iron rods omitted.
At the time this bridge was built, a family named Grandstaff owned land around the bridge site and the bridge quite naturally became known as the Grandstaff Bridge. Today, the bridge is known only as the Mt. Olive Road Bridge. Both bridge and road take their names from the nearby Mt. Olive Church. The bridge is at the mouth of a valley from the east down which an important trail and road until about 1825 passed between Chillicothe and Marietta. This trail came east from Chillicothe to Allensville and then northeast to the valley which runs east from Mt. Olive Church (just east of the covered bridge) and thence northeast on now impassable roads and down over the ridge in an easterly direction to a ford across Raccoon Creek. Old-timers used to refer to this as the "Buffalo Trail".
Bridge Description
The Mt. Olive Road Covered Bridge is a one-span wooden truss, covered bridge the middle fork of Salt Creek on Mt. Olive Road in Jackson Township section 7, one-mile northeast of Allensville in Vinton County, Ohio. This old span has vertical, high-boarded siding, stone and concrete abutments, a metal roof and straight portals.
Known as the Mt. Olive Road Covered Bridge, this old bridge was built in 1875 using the simple queenpost truss plan, a variation of the simple kingpost. In the queenpost truss, there are two triangular truss members separated at the top by a horizontal crosspiece. This is not a part of the top chord of the bridge, but a separate piece, running parallel to the top chord. The queenpost truss allowed for a longer base for the truss, thus making it possible to bridge wider streams than could be done with a simple, single kingpost. When the queenpost was not long enough, the early builders developed the multiple kingpost.
The Mt. Olive Road Covered Bridge is very simply built. All diagonals are 9½" x 9½" and all truss uprights are also 9½" x 9½", while the end posts are 5½" x 9½". Steel channels of varying heights have been applied to the outside of these end posts and anchored with bolts to the concrete bridge seats. These end posts are not covered by any extension of the siding as is usual with most of our covered bridges. The bridge gets some protection from the weather by a roof overhang of about 4½'. Steel channels have also been added to the truss diagonals. There are two wooden joists under the bridge and there are concrete pillars for piers under the west joist. Steel I-beams run from abutment to abutment forming both floor beams and lower chords. The west abutment is the original stone and the east abutment is the original stone with a concrete base. The flow of the stream is against the east abutment.
This bridge measures 50'6" from portal to portal, which in this case, includes the entire truss, plus about a 4½' overhang on each end. It is 14'2" wide overall with a 12'6" roadway. The height of the truss is 11'. The bridge has a single-layer floor laid crosswise, with raised runners.
East portal, south side, looking northwest (1975)
