Historic covered bridge hit by a truck yet again
WBBM
By Shardaa Gray
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LONG GROVE, Illinois (WBBM) — It happened yet again — another truck hit the historic covered bridge in Long Grove, Illinois, north of Chicago.
This time, it was not the bridge, but the truck that sustained the most damage.
The historic bridge is a main attraction. But business owners say just about every week, a truck gets stuck trying to go through the bridge.
“It keeps the town busy. It definitely makes a big scene when it happens,” said Rachael Swift, owner of Rachael’s Whimsical Boutique in Long Grove. “That becomes a two-, three-hour escapade of trying to get them out from under the bridge.”
Swift said she saw a truck slam into the bridge as it sped by on Monday.
“He didn’t look like he was going to slow down, so I ran around and ran outside, and I grabbed my phone and started taking pictures — and you can kind of hear this crunching of him trying to squeeze under the bridge,” she said. “Once he got stuck under the bridge yesterday, he tried backing out, and it just sounds like metal crunching up on itself.”
CBS News Chicago has reported on mishaps involving the covered bridge numerous times.
In September 2022, a truck got stuck. The very next week, the same happened to a U-Haul.
In March 2023, an Amazon truck couldn’t get through. At that time, the Lake County Sheriff’s office said it was the 45th time the bridge has been struck since reopening in 2020.
The village’s visiting center says the iconic Robert Parker Coffin Bridge dates back to the 1840s. The first bridge, according to the Long Grove History website, was a “simple wooden affair” that provided a less messy alternative for those who otherwise would have ridden their horses through Buffalo Creek.
The wooden bridge was replaced with a modern truss structure in 1906. The covering, while it may seem like a quaint piece of turn-of-the-last-century Americana too, did not come around until 1972.
The bridge was reinforced with a steel structure in 2020 to avoid expensive repairs. That came after it was closed for two years when it was severely damaged by a truck crash in 2018.
The Facebook page for the Long Grove covered bridge accident tracker said this was the 66th time the bridge has been hit since 2020.
“We’ll have some times where it’ll get hit once a week, or it’ll be a couple of weeks or a month — and then all of a sudden, one will hit it,” said Swift.
Despite signs stating trucks aren’t allowed to go through, Swift believes it will happen again.
“It’s going to happen. I hate to have to say that, but there’s only so much the village and just as business owners we can do,” she said. “It really is on the person who’s driving the truck and just building that awareness.”
CBS News Chicago reached out to Long Grove Village President Bill Jacob to see whether the village will be making any changes to prevent this, but we have not heard back.
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