McKee Bridge

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

From the record

“The McKee Bridge is a covered bridge in Jackson County in the U.S. state of Oregon. Built on land donated by Adelbert (Deb) McKee, a stage station operator, the bridge originally carried a road over the Applegate River that linked the Blue Ledge Copper Mine to Jacksonville.”
Wikipedia article McKee Bridge, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 154 National Register listings published here for Jackson County · listed in 1979 · category: Structure.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
Address. S of Ruch, Ruch, 97530
When was it listed? November 1979
Category. structure
Also known as. Oregon Covered Bridges TR
Census division. Southwest Jackson
National Register reference number. 79002074 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

151 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 151 fires within 5 miles of McKee Bridge between 1992 and 2020, burning about 4,385 acres in total. 67 started naturally. 9 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Natural	67
Equipment and vehicle use	21
Recreation and ceremony	18
Debris and open burning	11
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	10
Arson/incendiarism	9
Power generation/transmission/distribution	5
Smoking	4
Other causes	3
Misuse of fire by a minor	1
Fireworks	1
Firearms and explosives use	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
9 September 1995	Power generation/transmission/distribution	40 acres	Medford Unit	APPLEGATE RIVER
8 September 2006	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Medford Unit	UPPER APPLEGATE
6 September 2000	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Medford Unit	UPPER APPLEGATE RD.
6 September 1993	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Medford Unit	UPPER APPLEGATE
5 September 2019	Natural	under an acre	Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest	FLUMET
5 September 2019	Natural	1.0 acres	Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest	9 DOLLAR
5 September 2019	Natural	under an acre	Oregon Department of Forestry Salem Headquarters	GROUSE CREEK
5 September 2019	Natural	under an acre	Medford District	BOAZ

Every fire recorded in Jackson County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 42 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 42 workings within 5 miles of McKee Bridge: 22 past producers, 13 occurrences, 6 prospects, 1 producer. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Gold, Antimony, Mercury, Gold, Silver. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Applegate Dam	Gold, Silver, Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Applegate Dam	Sand and Gravel, Construction, Silver, Gold	Past Producer
Blue Jay Prospect	Antimony, Gold, Arsenic	Past Producer	Kermesite, Stibnite
Unknown	Uranium	Occurrence
Yellowjacket	Gold, Silver, Lead, Copper	Occurrence	Chalcopyrite, Galena, Pyrite
Yellowjacket	Gold, Copper, Silver, Lead	Prospect
Blue Jay Antimony	Antimony, Gold, Silver	Past Producer
Gold Pan	Gold, Silver	Past Producer	Vein
Gold Pan Group	Gold, Silver	Past Producer
Golden Plume	Gold, Silver, Copper	Occurrence

Every working recorded in Jackson County

Storms near this property

6 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Ruch, the town this property stands in, in 6 storm reports between 1994 and 2017: 5 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
August 2017	Thunderstorm Wind	Ruch	-	A 24 inch in diameter pine tree was snapped in half and took out a birch tree. Time based on radar estimate.
August 2013	Hail	Ruch	-	A spotter 1 SSE Ruch reported 1 inch hail on Squires Peak at 07/1520 PST.
July 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Ruch	-	See below.
July 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Ruch	-	See below.
July 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Ruch	-	See below.
June 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Ruch	-	A Weather Spotter with an anemometer reported measuring a wind gust during a thunderstorm of 50 kt. No damage reports were received.

Every storm recorded in Jackson County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

4 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
McKee Bridge Campground	0.2 miles	2000
Star Ranger Station Building, Old	1.8 miles	2000
Star Ranger Station	1.8 miles	1991
Squaw Peak Lookout	5.0 miles	2000

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 79002074 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Jackson County	All 154 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.