For starters, covered bridges really WERE build to the west of the Mississippi River...something New Englanders like to overlook. One of the longest is in Knights Ferry, California, crossing the Stanislaus River on the old 1850's route running from Stockton and its deep-water port towards the southern Mother Lode (Gold Rush) mining towns of Sonora, Jamestown, Columbia, Mariposa. The bridge today is a reconstruction of an earlier span, washed out in flood water when an upstream bridge broke loose, and was pushed as a floating pile of debris into the Knights Ferry bridge supports. (that's a cheater's way of taking out a bridge that would probably survive on its own) This one has a history of its own. Its rebuilt "birth" was in the middle of the US Civil War - 1863 (think the year of bloody battles at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga). In spring, now, an annual Civil War reenactment occurs here. The sound of good boots on the solid wood underfoot easily reminds one of the "Old West" or "Wild West" feel and mood. I have long considered this unique wooden structure to be the most wonderful natural photo studio I have ever found. There are a multitude of light sources, large and small, obvious and not, that bring daylight into the dark interior. They interact and compliment one another in a multitude of ways...for anyone willing to pause long enough to pay some "visual attention" to what their eyes can find. But, the overall setting is far more than simply a "long narrow barn build over a river," and has character in its surviving buildings, its oak and cottonwood woodlands, and its upstream rocky outcrops and riverside 'pocket' beaches. Late winter into mid spring, the river is running fast, high, and cold in full snow-runoff fury; Late summer into early fall, it is a quiet, slow-running cool water with days from warm to downright hot.