Wooden bridges have been around ever since the first tree fell across a brook, but building one and then dragging it into place is something different, especially if the bridge is 120 ft. long and weights 250,000 lbs.

Designed by DCF Engineering of Carey, North Carolina, as a pedestrian walkway that connects the restored Moravian village of Old Salem to a new visitors center, this is the first covered bridge erected in North Carolina in nearly a century. Blue Ridge Timberwrights of Christiansburg, Virginia, used more than 600 salvaged southern yellow-pine timbers in the structure.

Each bridge truss was built on the flat and raised upright with a pair of cranes; deck and roof timbers tied the structure together. Hill House Movers from Salem, Virginia, slowly towed the bridge over temporary cribbing into position with a pair of semitrailer trucks, one pulling and one acting as a brake. A day of hauling brought the bridge into position; it took two more days to anchor the new span to its abutments and to remove the temporary bridge.