Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

There’s only one covered bridge in Clinton County. It didn’t used to be that way. There used to be several—I can name at least three, offhand. But most of them were destroyed over the years—The most obvious story is the Jay Street Bridge in Lock Haven, which burned down in January of 1919 because a cheated-upon wife set it on fire.
But now there’s only one. It’s down in Sugar Valley, not too far from Loganton. The last remaining covered bridge in Clinton County. And, interestingly, we have Henry Wharton Shoemaker to thank.

Usually when I write about Henry Shoemaker, I’m talking about his career as a folklorist and recounting some of his old stories of haunted places. And with all that, it’s pretty easy to forget that Shoemaker was a valued community member, too, and fought for the environment and historic preservation a lot.

All this is evidenced in an article I found from the Clinton County Times, which ran on March 16, 1954. It is no big surprise that the Clinton County Times, a newspaper that absolutely loved random weirdness, would give a whole lot of front-page space to Henry Shoemaker, who could out-weird you any day of the week. Many other articles from or about Shoemaker in the Times focused on various paranormal stories. This one, however, was less bizarre, and dealt with Shoemaker’s fight to save the covered bridge.

Shoemaker, who had a camp in Logan Township (Of course Shoemaker had a camp in Logan Township) had been enlisted to the cause by Harvey Wren, a local Justice of the Peace and writer. Wren was aware of plans from the state government to demolish the bridge, and pulled Shoemaker into the fight. Shoemaker sent off a letter to Highways Secretary E.L. Schmidt in Harrisburg.

“A survey has been made to replace the old covered bridge at Logan Mills, in Clinton County, which has been a landmark for so long,” the letter said. (Shoemaker had a somewhat flowery, expansive way of writing; many of his ghost stories were way worse than this.) “As the bridge seems to be in good workable condition and able to do the slight amount of work put on it for the next ten or fifteen years, I respectfully ask that the destruction of this covered bridge be taken from your list of improvements. If there were any other covered bridges in Clinton County and this one was in bad condition, I would say nothing, but being the lone survivor, it should be treated with a restraining hand.”

Shoemaker went on to note that he was far from alone in this fight—The people of Sugar Valley, and Clinton County in general, were with him in saving the bridge. They all felt strongly about this, except for maybe the ones who were too busy feeling strongly about the ten-percent wage increase that Lock Haven city employees had just received.

At any rate, Shoemaker’s influence worked, or perhaps they saved the covered bridge just to avoid any more letters. Schmidt took the bridge off the demolition list, and it remained that way until the early 2000s, when PennDOT decided to demolish the bridge and start the whole thing over again. It was once again saved by a public outcry, though this time it didn’t include Henry Shoemaker, who was too busy being dead to write any letters this time.

So that’s the story of how Henry Shoemaker saved a covered bridge. It’s less spooky than most of his stories, but still an interesting part of history. Speaking of interesting parts of history, you’re still hung up on the jealous wife who torched the Jay Street Bridge, aren’t you? I thought so. But that’s another column, and I’ll get to it sooner or later.