After the discovery of the rich Comstock Silver Lode in Washoe Territory, Nevada, in 1859, many miners quickly headed east and a company immediately formed to build a road connecting this area of California to the Comstock, completing the Henness Pass Road in 1861; a journalist called it “...a mixture of excellence and abominations.” Thomas Freeman financed the Oregon Creek Covered Bridge in 1871 to replace an earlier bridge, and Hugh Thomas designed and hand-built it as a structure more than 100 feet long with a slight curve at either end, whose timbers still show the marks of his adze. In 1883, the upstream English Dam on the Middle Yuba River failed, and debris from it created a temporary downstream dam that raised Oregon Creek, sending a flood that lifted the bridge, carried it 150 feet downstream, turned it around, and set it back on its abutments backwards, where it still stands as a model of craftsmanship and ingenuity.