Location:

Dewey Road, Plymouth Township. Take Route 193 exit (Kingsville) from Interstate 90; go south on Route 193 to Plymouth Ridge Road. Immediately after crossing Interstate 90 on the bridge, turn right (Brant’s Apple Orchard); Dewey Road is on the left past the orchard.

Construction Date:

1873

Style:

Town lattice

Length:

115

Nearby attraction:

Olin’s Museum of Covered Bridges is on the left just before the bridge.

Narrative from “The Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County” by Carl E. Feather

When Barrie Bottorf speaks of the Dewey Road covered bridge, it is always possessively, even though it is a county bridge. Insert image 047
“It’s our bridge,” says Bottorf, who lives along the river downstream from the Plymouth Township bridge. ”It’s an extension of our private property,” adds his niece Julie Grandbouche, who owns property on the east side.
“My entire life, that bridge was there and part of us,” Bottorf says.

The bridge dates from 1873 and is 115 feet long. The venerated structure figured into the childhood of many a Plymouth and Kingsville township resident, as under it was one of the best swimming pools to be found along the Ashtabula River.

“In the old days, when I was kid, everybody swam under the bridge,” Bottorf says. “It was basically the community swimming hole. Upriver was another hole, where the boys swam – skinny dipping.” The swimming hole was courtesy of a dam that has since disappeared. The deep hole underneath the bridge has filled in since Bottorf’s childhood days, when the youngsters would squeeze through a spot where the siding had fallen off the bridge and dive into the water.

Read more about this bridge, purchase the book.