Hartland, New Brunswick’s covered bridge got a Google Doodle today to mark the 111th anniversary of its opening.

Hartland, New Brunswick’s covered bridge got a Google Doodle today to mark the 111th anniversary of its opening.

The 391m-long covered bridge — the longest in the world — officially opened July 4, 1901, and has spanned the St. John River ever since.

It was built privately after a group of citizens, faced by government inaction, came together to form the Hartland Bridge Company, and for its first years of operation it was funded by tolls: three cents for pedestrians and six for a horse and wagon.

N.B. Government

The Hartland Covered Bridge spanning the St. John River.

The government of New Brunswick took over the structure in 1906 and has operated it since.

The bridge was declared a National Historic Site of Canada in 1980.

According to Canada’s Historic Places, the bridge’s unique design and physical fabric give the site its heritage value:

Covered bridges date from the first decade of the 19th century when North American buildings began using wooden trusses for long spans and covered them to prevent the truss joins from rotting. After 1840 the Howe truss, which introduced iron tension rods into the truss work, was widely adopted and New Brunswick erected numerous bridges using this technique, among them this one, built in 1921 with a walkway added in 1943.

FILES/Saint John Telegraph Journal

The Hartland Bridge, pictured in here in 1986, is the longest-covered bridge in the world.

Google creates dozens of doodles throughout the year to mark notable occasions, many of which roll out on a country-by-country basis. South of the border on Wednesday, for example, Google’s U.S. site got a doodle for the fourth of July.

A few days earlier, the search giant celebrated Canada Day.