Historically, timber bridges always have played an important role for people in crossing the water barriers, depth valleys or other obstacles. In my presentation I would like to give short historical view of timber bridge development in Latvia and some comments about characteristic structures. After that I will give some information about the timber bridges that are maintained today on Latvian roads. And at the end of my presentation I will give some examples about the proposed new bridges. The first timber bridge in Latvia was found during the archeological investigation on Araishi lake Fortress. Through excavations it was established that the raiši lake Fortress was built and inhabited in the 9th - 10th century. Bridge consisted from log beams covered by round timber and supported on timber pale foundations. It was surprising high engineering level. The first large floating bridge over Daugava River near Riga was build by Swedish King Karl XII before his attack on Riga city during the North war in year 1702. The bridge was in service till 1710. The next floating bridge in Riga city was built in 1715 and it was in service till 1896. Golden age for timber bridges in Latvia was the period from the end of 19 century till the II World War. In that time Latvia had high qualified bridge engineers which were able to design and build interesting bridge structures. After the II World War many bridges was destroyed and the major part of them was rebuilt or built as temporary bridges in timber structures. For temporary structures for spans from 12 till 32 m often were used board trusses, consisting from two diagonally nailed board layers. Today on Latvian rods have been maintained 23 timber bridges and bridges with timber elements. Of course today’s timber bridges are not so impressive than the bridges built before the II World War. The timber bridges had limited load carrying capacity and shorter life time if compared with concrete or steel bridges; therefore the use of timber bridges goes down. In 90 ties was reconsidered the advantages of timber as structural material. The new achievements in timber industry, especially in wood protections technologies and use of glued timber, allowed using the timber bridges on rods with less traffic. The timber bridges could be well adopted in surround nature, therefore they have been built in natural parks and rest places. The timber as structural material was out of active use for approximately last 45 years. The purpose was the short life time of sown timber materials and low load carrying capacity of timber bridge structure. Today’s achievements in timber protection systems, new joining methods, possibility to producē the glued timber structures with clearly indicated properties, will return the timber as structural material in bridge construction industry.