DARLINGTON, Wis. -- Years ago, shop class was pretty simple. Maybe there was basic car maintenance or some basic home repair.

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And while times have changed, even these days, what a group of young men in Darlington did is really off the charts.

Nothing symbolizes the beauty of small town America quite like a covered bridge. While there are less than 1,000 such structures in the U.S., soon Darlington might have two of them, WISC-TV reported.

Teacher Dick Anderson's shop class at Darlington High School isn't your average industrial arts class. This year, four students took on the class project of a lifetime.

"It's amazing what they accomplish when you turn them loose," Anderson said.

The project began when local businessman Joey Wiegel approached Anderson with a plan for students to build him a covered bridge.

"I thought he was talking about a little one to go over a garden or something," Anderson said. "A couple weeks later, he gets back in town and says … they want it 10 feet wide and I said, 'Whoa!'"

Junior Jordan Torstenson, who was one of the students working on the bridge, said that the project was a major endeavor.

"He wanted to be able to drive a dump truck load and it can," Torstenson said. "Mr. Anderson's driven his truck over it. We've all driven our trucks over it."

"When Joey came to us with the project, I just wanted to go right at it because I wanted to be part of an experience like this," junior Tim Houtakker said.

"The most difficult part is getting the angles right," Torstenson said. "I mean, we had cross members and angles. The roof sticking out at an angle, took us a couple times to get it right."

"You can't just build it," said fellow student Josh Singer. "(There are) so many other things you have to take into consideration, and it's really just opened up my eyes."

Senior Jerred Jacobsen said that the construction effort began in the school's parking lot.

"We built and constructed the whole thing here at the school out in our parking lot there," Jacobsen said. "And then, they loaded it up on a semi with couple cranes, put it on the semi-trailer and they brought it out to the private owner's land and they placed the bridge out there."

"It was awesome to get it done, to look at what we'd done, to go back later in life and look at it," Houtakker said.

"I went back to it like a week ago with my grandparents, and I didn't even think we built it that well," said Singer. "It's been so well since I last saw it and I looked at it and I was just, 'Wow, it's just really amazing!'"

Anderson said that the project has caught the eye of others in neighboring towns as well.

"We've actually had a contact from people in Gratiot, who just put a park up down there and they want (a) small bridge over a small creek instead of going out on a highway. So, I see this as a student enterprise," Anderson said. "These guys will make their own scholarships."

The span that they've already built is now a blueprint for their legacy and has become a Darlington city landmark, WISC-TV reported.

"We …. want to make the same thing only it'll be 54 feet long covered, and hopefully over the Pecatonica River in downtown Darlington," said Houtakker.

"Just see that huge landmark with your buds, that'd be really cool," Singer said.

The group needs to raise $30,000 for the bridge and they'll need approval from Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state Department of Natural Resources. Officials said that even wading through the approval process has been a great learning tool for the students.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the bridge is already planned for July 4, 2008 so they need to raise funds, and get to work.

Note: This story is the first in a two-part series of stories suggested and voted on by viewers of WISC-TV and Channel 3000. The next installment of the "Viewers' Choice" series will run on Wednesday night at 10 p.m.