Whites Bridge: burned by an arsonist, rebuilt board for board

Someone set Whites Bridge on fire in the early hours of July 7, 2013, and the whole thing was gone before the town woke up. A 144-year-old covered bridge over the Flat River, near the little village of Smyrna in Keene Township, burned to the waterline. Crews later found traces of an accelerant. Nobody was ever charged.

The bridge it took had a good story of its own. Local residents wanted a crossing here in 1869. They hired Jared Bresee, who had built the Fallasburg covered bridge a few miles south, along with Joseph Walker. To keep the price down, the two men used secondhand lumber. They finished the 120-foot span in just 84 days, with nothing but muscle and animals doing the lifting. They built it as a Brown truss — a design of diagonal beams and near-vertical tension rods, patented in 1857. Then they sheathed the whole frame in rough pine to keep the weather off the timbers. It carried wagons, then cars, for generations.

After the fire, the Whites Bridge Historical Society and the Ionia County Road Commission decided not to settle for a photo on a plaque. They hired engineers to draw up a replica that would sit on the original stone abutments and follow the 1869 Brown truss as closely as modern load rules allow. The rebuilt bridge opened to traffic in June 2020, with its signage finished the next winter.

Drive across it now and you cross a bridge that is both brand new and very old — the same span, the same trusswork, the same dark wooden tunnel over the same green river, put back by people who refused to let an arsonist have the last word.