The Holz-Brücke: a covered bridge two oxen dragged across the Cass

The wooden bridge over the Cass River in Frankenmuth is held together by wooden pegs. No bolts, no steel plates, no nails — the way bridges were built before anyone had the metal to do otherwise. It’s called the Holz-Brücke, German for “wood bridge,” and it stretches 239 feet across the river, which makes it the largest covered wooden bridge in Michigan.

The idea started in the early 1960s as a notion between two brothers, Eddie and William “Tiny” Zehnder Jr., who ran the town’s two giant chicken-dinner restaurants and figured a covered bridge would suit a place already leaning hard into its old-country roots. It took until 1979 to actually build, and they hired the right man for an honest job: Milton Graton, a New Hampshire craftsman known across the country as the last of the traditional covered-bridge builders. His crew framed it out of Douglas fir and pinned it together with those wooden pegs.

Then came the part people still talk about. In January 1980 the finished 230-ton span had to be moved into its final position over the river. Graton did it the old way — with a team of oxen named Buck and Bright leaning into the load and inching the whole bridge across. It’s the kind of thing that sounds made up until you see the photographs.

Walk across it today and you get pedestrian lanes on both sides and a view down the Cass that’s worth the stroll. The wood creaks a little underfoot, the roof keeps the weather off, and the river slides by below exactly as it did when an ox team set the thing in place.