A tale as old as time for Cobb County: the beam protecting the historic covered bridge on Concord Road was hit again Wednesday, the third time already this year.
The wooden bridge was originally built in 1872 and has undergone a series of repairs and renovations through the years, notably to protect it from vehicles too large to fit under its 7-foot roof.
The county seems to have tried everything.
On Wednesday, a rental truck hit the protective beam placed in front of the bridge entrance to stop vehicles too large from attempting to pass through. Instead of repairing the bridge itself, county crews simply repair the beam when drivers miss the warnings and crash into it.
Yellow signs up the road on both sides of the bridge warn drivers of the 7-foot height limit; other signs light up and say “Use Turnaround” when triggered by sensors detecting trucks that are too tall; 7-foot rubber warning pipes dangle over the road to slap the tall trucks driving underneath; and a special turnaround roundabout is nearby for easy escape.
For a while, the preventative measures seemed to be working.
After the hanging pipes were installed, wrecks went down dramatically, said county spokesman Ross Cavitt.
“We had no hits for a long time,” Cavitt said. “Lately, they ticked back up again, for reasons that we cannot fathom.”
Each driver has paid the price. The county charges the cost of repairing the beam, anywhere from a few hundred dollars to the low thousands, to the drivers or their insurance. Drivers are also usually given a citation by police, Cavitt said.
Some have suggested tearing down the wooden bridge altogether or making it a pedestrian bridge, neither of which are options for those who value its presence in the community.
It is one of the few historic covered bridges that are still driveable in the state, and it’s the centerpiece of a historic district that includes other elements of the 19th-century milling community.
“It takes you back in time,” said nearby resident Philip Ivester. “There’s a lot of people that really enjoy the historic nature of the bridge and the area.”
Ivester, who has lived in the area since 1975, said the county’s measures have decreased the frequency of the wrecks. To him, the occasional crash into the protective beam is “a small price to pay for the county to keep a historic treasure that means so much to so many people.”
“All it does is knock the beam over, and they come out and get the beam back up, and traffic’s moving again,” he said.
The historic bridge is here to stay, Cavitt said.
“There’s an easy way around it if people would just take that route,” he added.
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