Brubaker Covered Bridge, Gratis Ohio
The Brubaker Covered Bridge was built in 1887 by Evrett S. Sherman, who utilized the Childs truss method of construction developed and patented in 1846 by Horace Childs. Ohio has the only known covered bridges of this type in the nation and seven of the eight remaining are in Preble County.
Sherman was a native of New Hampshire who lived in Eaton, Ohio, during the last decades of the 19th Century. A disastrous storm in 1886 washed out a number of bridges and started Sherman on a 10-year period in which he erected 15 bridges in Preble County. By standardizing his truss members he was able to pre-fabricate much of his materials in his bridge yard on North Maple Street in Eaton during the off-season. Native Hardwood was obtained from local sawmills for the floors, hub rails, and roof shingle lath. All the white pine for the framework and siding was purchased from Cobb & Mitchell of Cadillac, Michigan.
Bridge Description
The Brubaker Covered Bridge is an example of the little known Childs truss bridges which utilized iron bars as diagonal counterbraces in its multiple kingpost construction.
It is a single-span bridge set on cut limestone abutments and features a low-pitched gabled roof with shingles and metal covering. Its 85-foot length is partially sided with vertical boards and has an 8½-feet overhang at each end. The level roadway is 15 feet wide and has an overhead clearance of 11½ feet.
Poor visibility caused by the oblique angles of the roadway approaches required the removal of a portion of the vertical siding in 1936. The Preble County Highway Department has also added an oak runway over the original beech floor beams and replaced a part of the shingle roof with metal. The stone abutments have been pointed with a cement-sand stucco applied with a compressed air technique.
This shows the southern wall of the bridge from the interior, illustrating the construction details (1974)
