Steve Stolte was a civil engineering student at Ohio State University when the Silver Bridge, which connected Gallipolis to Point Pleasant, West Virgina, on busy U.S. Route 35, collapsed into the Ohio River.
He had been inspired to study civil engineering while he worked at his father’s construction company in high school, but he didn’t start focusing on bridges until that 1967 disaster, which killed 46 people.
“The collapse of Silver Bridge impacted me significantly,” Stolte says. “It heightened my interest in bridge construction and changed the course of my career.”
During his career as Union County engineer, Steve Stolte would oversee the replacement of more than 200 bridges.
After the collapse, Ohio began to require that all bridges in the state be inspected once each year. Seeing an opportunity to both make some money and potentially save some lives, Stolte and some of his college friends started up a new business.
They attended classes during the week, but on weekends they traveled into rural counties throughout the state to perform those mandated bridge inspections.
“We learned quickly to drive across each bridge prior to doing our inspection, because we often didn’t want to drive across after seeing the condition they were in,” he says.
The experience broadened his knowledge of construction and fueled his burgeoning passion for bridges — particularly the covered bridges of Union County, much of which is served by URE–Union Rural Electric Cooperative.
After he graduated in 1969, Stolte took a job in Union County and soon became a partner in the engineering firm of Fleming, Page, and Stolte. One of the other partners, Jim Page, an environmental engineer, worked together with Stolte to create the grid system that numbered all the homes in Union County. It was a massive undertaking, but it gave him a better understanding of the area.
In 1984, Stolte decided to run for county engineer. “It was time for change,” he says. “I wanted to be more progressive and apply for grants to make improvements.”
He would serve in that role for nearly 25 years, working tirelessly to update both equipment and infrastructure throughout the county. Later, he was elected as a county commissioner and served another 10 years in office. In that time, the county replaced more than 200 bridges, widened 100 miles of road, improved traffic signage, and installed thousands of feet of modern guardrails.
But one aspect of his tenure stands out: his work on covered bridges.
“We discovered the covered bridges in Union County when we inspected them in college,” Stolte says. “I’m most proud of building two new covered bridges, Buck Run Covered Bridge and North Lewisburg Covered Bridge. We also elevated all covered bridges from 5 to 8 tons to a higher load limit, so school buses and farm equipment could go over them.”
The Buck Run Covered Bridge, built in 2006, spans Darby Creek and is the longest single-span wooden bridge in Ohio at 160 feet in length. The two-lane North Lewisburg Covered Bridge was completed that same year to replace the original 1868 Pottersburg Bridge, which was relocated and restored — and dedicated to Stolte in 2022.
Together with his wife, Mardy, Stolte still devotes his time and efforts to educating visitors about covered bridges through local events, such as Dine on a Covered Bridge, designed to showcase and celebrate the history of covered bridges in Union County. The event draws hundreds of people from across the state. From July through October every year, visitors are offered guided tours, lunch or dinner made with locally sourced ingredients, and live music on the bridge.
After spending the bulk of his life restoring the old and building the new, Stolte is convinced it was the right thing to do. “Covered bridges are a link to the past, a past that was simpler and slower-paced,” he says. “They are also a link to our transportation history. They were the very first bridge that saw widespread use in Ohio. And they are still valuable today.”
Want to visit the covered bridges of Union County? Find more information at www.dineonacoveredbridge.com and www.unioncountyoh.com.
