Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1984. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Johnson Road Covered Bridge is a covered bridge located near Petersburg, Jackson County, Ohio, United States.”
Wikipedia article Johnson Road Covered Bridge, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 10 National Register listings in Jackson County · listed in 1984 · category: Structure.
National Register reference number.84003749- 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
7 since 2006
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 7 fires within 5 miles of Johnson Road Covered Bridge between
2006 and 2014, burning about 19 acres in total. None started naturally. None was 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
Debris and open burning
4
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
2
Smoking
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 440 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Johnson Road Covered Bridge between 1899 and
1975: 195 Animalia, 154 Plantae, 89 Fungi, 2 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. Cronquist, A.J. Sharp, Bartley and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
2 workings within 5 miles of Johnson Road Covered Bridge: 2 producers.
All of them still produce. What was taken out: Clay, Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Petersburg, the town this property stands in, in 3 storm reports between 1995 and 2025: 2 thunderstorm wind, 1 flood.
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.
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.
From the nomination file
1,519 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Johnson Road Covered Bridge is a single span wooden truss covered bridge spanning way is approximately 14' wide and the structure is 17'4" wide overall with a 12' over- head clearance. The bridge has vertical siding, a gabled metal roof, projecting portals wards the center at a 450 angle and the counter braces inclined towards the abutments lateral bracing connects the bottom and top chords of the two trusses. Condition abutments. date ruins fair at a 6o? angle.The center panel is a V formed by two counterbraces.A "rigidly fastened" Check one the Little Scioto River in an isolated rural section of southwest Jackson County.It The trusses of the bridge are Robert Smith's 1869 patent.The braces are inclined to- is a six panel Smith truss measuring 70' 11" overall and 68'3" clear span.
The road- and a single layer of floor planks laid diagonally. It sets on the original cut stone unexposed deteriorated Areas of Significance-Check and justify below - economics X engineering X 1800-1899 exploration settlement politics government ca. 1870 Statement of
Statement of significance
(in one paragraph) truss type developed by an important and prolific Ohio bridge builder, Robert W. Smith. throughout the state and the Midwest in the 1870s. He continually adapted and improved his truss design as he built them, and four different variations have been identified. example of 19th century wooden bridge technology. thereafter, he moved his business to Toledo to take advantage of its better transportation Department of Transportation.
It was combined with the Toledo Bridge Company in the cutting down the dimensions of the ends of the timbers, and thus avoid reducing the amount of material and thereby the strength of each member, a major concern of 19th century Smith built a large number of both wooden and iron highway and railroad bridges throughout southern Ohio, and all but one of the known examples of his Smith truss today are south 1600-1699 1890s. 1400-1499 conservation 1700-1799 1500-1599 communications philosophy theater industry humanitarian transportation military commerce invention literature Period archeology-prehistoric music agriculture law social/ Specific dates 1900- 8.
Significance of the old National Road.Virtually all of the covered bridges built in Jackson County firm's agent and reputation in this area. ..archeology-historic _communityplanning -prehistoric --other(specify) Robert Smith was bornin Miami County in 1833,the son of a cabinet maker.Asa teenager ...architecture ...education ...sculpture .. science landscape architecture Builder Architect Robert W. Smith The Johnson Road Covered Bridge is significant as an example of a distinctive wooden The Johnson Bridge was built upon Smith's 1869 patent (#97,714), and is the only structure of this type known to currently exist in the state, and is thus a comparatively rare facilities. By the 1870s the firm began the construction of metal truss bridges, to the minimum of material.
They were designed so that connections could be made without wooden bridge builders.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 84003749, 11 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
1 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.
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.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
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.
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