Despite his success at Oregon State, the art and science of bridge building still called, so in 1919 Conde took an offer to become Oregons bridge engineer in the Bridge Division of the Oregon Department of Transportation, and immediately hired the entire graduating class in civil engineering at Oregon Stateall five of them. Four accepted: Ellsworth G. Ricketts; Raymond Peany Archibald (also captain of the football team); Mervyn Steve Stephenson; and Albert Skelton. So Conde McCulloughs bridge-building career in Oregon began; he and his staff would design and build nearly 600 bridges in Oregon between 1919 and 1925.

As the 1930s approached the number of projects decreased but the size of each grew. By the 1930s, the time of construction of the bridges of the Oregon coast, McCullough would build his biggest and best bridges and be at the peak of his creative powers, George Edmonston wrote in the December 1999 Oregon Stater. In Bridges: Spans of North America (1974), David Plowden also commented on Condes coast bridges: McCulloughs best examples, representing perhaps the most interesting concentration of concrete bridges in America, are found on the Oregon Coast Highway on the Oregon Coast.

These bridges would provide jobs during the Great Depression, benefit the states industries by consuming large amounts of lumber, sand, gravel, and cement, and promote tourism. (The year after the bridges were built, tourism in Oregon jumped 72 percent!) It would also obviate the ferries at Gold Beach, Coos Bay, Reedsport, Waldport, and Newporta transportation system described by one critic as abominable.