THE LITTLE COVERED BRIDGE HIDING IN THE REDWOODS

Sometimes the coolest pieces of history aren't behind velvet ropes or sitting in museums. Sometimes they're hiding down a little road in the middle of the redwoods, waiting for somebody curious enough to drive through them. That's exactly what we found outside Crescent City. Tucked away near Hiouchi, just before Sheep Pen Creek empties into the beautiful Smith River, sits this little wooden-covered crossing. It looks like something that should have been carrying horses and wagons a hundred years ago. But here's where the story gets interesting: it isn't nearly as old as it looks. The bridge was built in the 1970s and spans only about 48 feet across Sheep Pen Creek. Historical photographs and records identify it as the Sheep Pen Creek Covered Bridge, sometimes referred to around the area as the Jedediah Smith covered bridge. And then we found something we definitely didn't expect. According to Caltrans' historic bridge research, the structure carrying Douglas Park Road over Sheep Pen Creek was built in 1975, and technically it isn't considered a true covered bridge. Traditional covered bridges use a timber truss that is actually part of the bridge's structural system. This one is a timber-stringer bridge with a gabled wooden roof built over it. In other words, it looks for all the world like an old-fashioned covered bridge, but an engineer will tell you otherwise. Maybe that's what makes finding places like this so much fun. We could have driven right past, never turned down the road, and never known it was here. Instead, we drove through it. For a few seconds, daylight disappeared, the Jeep rolled beneath those wooden walls and that roof, and then the redwoods opened up in front of us again. That's what this journey keeps teaching us: sometimes the places you never planned on finding become the ones you remember most. Come ride through it with us in the video above.