Radio Script #428

Little Talkson Common Things

September 27, 1959

Many times on this program I have mentioned the subject of covered bridges. Two years ago the Maine Department of Economic Development issued a pamphlet on the ten remaining covered bridges in Maine. Only a few weeks ago there was published a book on this subject that many of you will want to read. There is a copy in the Waterville Public Library. The book is called “Covered Bridges of the Northeast”, and the author is Richard Sanders Allen, postmaster of the little village of Round Lake, New York, where live fewer than a thousand people. All his life Allen has been interested in the fast disappearing covered bridges and in 1943 he started a little magazine called “Covered Bridge Topics”, which is now the official publication of the Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges.

Allen’s book is profusely illustrated with more than a hundred pictures, drawings and maps. I was astonished at some of the information I found in this admirable book. By the northeast, Allen means the six New England states, New York and New Jersey. My first surprise came when I learned that the state having the largest number of covered bridges still standing is not one of those eight states at all. I had long supposed that Vermont had more existing covered bridges than any other state. Listen to what Allen says: “Rock-ribbed Yankees will probably be surprised to learn that 80 percent of all covered bridges standing today are located outside their territory. The state with most remaining covered bridges is not in New England at all; nor is it the big Empire State of New York. The state that has that honor is Pennsylvania, where 400 covered bridges still stand. The nearest competitor is Ohio with 271, followed by Indiana with 170 and Oregon with 164.”

As we look through the Allen volume, picking up figures here and there, we discover that Vermont does indeed lead the New England states with 124 covered bridges that still remain despite the disastrous flood in that state thirty years ago. New Hampshire still has 56 of its old covered spans; Massachusetts has 11, Maine 10 and Connecticut four. Not one remains in Rhode Island, where at one time some of the largest covered bridges of New England once crossed the streams. In all eight states of the northeast there are left just 241 covered bridges.

The oldest of these remaining bridges is in New Hampshire, the bridge over the Ashuehot River at Swanzey, built in 1832; but only one year younger is the 1833 Arch Bridge across the Mad River at Waitsfield in the same state. Longest is Bedell’s Bridge, 436 feet over the Connecticut River between Haverhill, New Hampshire and South Newbury, Vermont.

By this time every regular listener to this program knows that bridges were covered not to keep off the snow, because often snow was shoveled on to the bridge to provide sledding across it; nor was the cover to provide weight to hold the bridge down. The purpose of the cover was to protect the bridge timbers. Not the floor timbers; those could be easily replaced. The protection was for the huge trusses that held the bridge together.

The next time you see a covered bridge, take a look at its side walls. There you will see the intricate crossing of timbers that made what were called trusses and sustained the weight of the span. During the centuries of bridge construction those trusses took many different patterns, but in all the covered bridges still standing you will find that some form of a cross played a part in building the trusses. In many parts of Europe, especially where the waters were not subject to severe floods, the trusses were placed beneath the floor of the bridge, but most American streams were subject to spring freshets which would sweep out such under trussing too easily. So we find most of our bridging built with the side trusses above, not below, the bridge floor. If you want to see a modern concrete bridge that is built on the same engineering principle, with side trusses of huge concrete columns and connecting arches across the top, take a look at the bridge across the Kennebec River at Norridgewock. It is that intricate pattern of concrete above the bridge floor that holds the bridge together.

Now those wooden trusses on the old bridges took a lot of wear from the weather. Covering protected the inside of the big timbers completely, and the roof overhang gave some protection to the outside. Of course our biggest floods made mincemeat of some of those spans, heavy as they were. But floods have destroyed many steel and concrete structures almost as easily. The wonder is not that freshets like the Kennebec’s great flood of 1832 washed out every bridge from Hallowell to Caratunk Falls at Solon; the wonder is that in 1959 any of those old structures are left standing at all.

The inside of a covered bridge was the best place along any highway to post the old placard advertisements. I am sure some of my older listeners remember those ads. Battle Ax and Double-thick B. L. Tobacco. Kickapoo Indian Oil, Horstetters’ Bitters. Fletcher’s Castoria, Pippin Cigars, Kendall’s Sparin Cure, Dr. Flint’s Powders, good for man or beast. Arm and Hammer Soda, Slade’s Spices. Rumford Baking Powder, Douglas Shoes, Pratt’s Poultry Food, and Hood’s Sarsaparilla. Many of those signs were not cardboard, but painted on tins, and protected from the weather, they stayed bright a long time. In fact the signs sometimes lasted so long that in one New Hampshire town in the 1870’s a family arrived at the county fair a whole week late. They had taken the date from a year-old poster on the covered bridge. Often a bridge had its own sign at either end, saying “Three dollars fine for driving on the bridge faster than a walk.”

Perhaps no one living remembers why the old covered spans were called kissing bridges. From time immemorial they were darkened tunnels for romance. The trouble was that they afforded not so much privacy as romantic folk desired. Small boys often hid in the cobwebbed rafters to eavesdrop on an afternoon promenade. One youngster heard a flustered suitor ask the boy’s sister Mehitable, “Marry, will you Hitty me?” Armed with that knowledge, the boy carried on mild blackmail against his sister, but he saw it sharply cut off when the girl married the flustered suitor.

Covered bridges served lots of purposes. One woman who lived near such a bridge in Vermont said she washed every Monday, rain or shine. If it rained, she just hung the clothes in the covered bridge. Squire Bassett of Winslow once married a couple on the old covered bridge across the Sebasticook, and held up all traffic while some forty witnesses watched him perform the ceremony.

On hot summer Sundays, church services were sometimes held on the bridges, and as the bridges became less used in favor of a nearby modern span, it was likely to see frequent use for church suppers and square dances.

Do you remember the smell of a covered bridge in constant use? It was by no means the fragrance of Chanel No.5. It was a complex mixture of hay, wood shavings, horse manure and ammonia — a scent you will never forget.

The one thing responsible for the great boom in covered bridges after 1840 was an iron rod. It replaced the wooden uprights in the old trusses, and having washers and bolts, it allowed the parts of a span to be tightened as the bridge wore under traffic. It was iron, the same material that caused the boom, that later caused the disappearance of the covered bridge. Gradually, as iron took over, there was less and less wood to protect from the weather. A cover was no longer necessary.

Wood has always been one of the finest building materials. Strong and somewhat elastic, it can be compressed from both ends, making it even stronger. But the quality that increases its strength under compression is responsible for its weakness when pieces of it are joined together. The weak parts of any all-wood truss are the joints. In iron trusses, on the other hand, the strongest parts are the joints.

Automobile highways also had much to do with the disappearance of the covered bridges. Too narrow for more than one way traffic, the old bridges slowed up too many cars. Then too, the approach was often at a sharp right angle to the roadway, too sharp a curve for an automobile. One Sunday last summer I drove to the beautiful Artist’s Bridge across the Sunday River at Newry.

Persons interested in preserving that old bridge have seen to it that it was not torn down, but the road no longer crosses it. A few feet away is a modern concrete structure. As many of you know, covered bridges were not confined to highways. Railroads used hundreds of them. The first railroad bridge across the Kennebec at Waterville was a covered bridge, and at least one picture taken from the top of Sand Hill shows four bridges — two across the Sebasticook and two across the Kennebec, and across each stream one of the two was a covered bridge.

As late as 1900 there were more than a hundred covered bridges on the Boston and Maine’s New Hampshire Division. Near Lebanon, New Hampshire trains popped in and out of fourteen covered bridges in a distance of six miles. The Rutland Railroad used a covered bridge at East Shoreham, Vermont as late as 1951. The New Haven’s last remaining covered bridge, over the Blackstone River at Woonsocket, Rhode Island succumbed to Hurricane Diane in 1955.

Fire was always a threat to covered bridges, especially to the railroad spans, where locomotive sparks were a constant menace. Firemen had orders to close their ashpans when crossing the bridges. There were usually water barrels, buckets and ladders at every railroad bridge.

Today there are left only twelve covered railroad bridges on four lines in New Hampshire and Vermont. The oldest covered railroad bridge in the United States that still stands is on the Boston and Maine at Bennington, New Hampshire. It was built 82 years ago in 1877, which gives it a record that many an iron railroad span may fail to equal.

Now let us be sure of the exact locations of Maine’s ten remaining covered bridges. One of them has the unique distinction of being within the limits of one of Maine’s largest cities. It is the Morse Bridge on Valley Avenue in Bangor, across the Kenduskeag Stream. It is one of only three of Maine’s remaining covered bridges that has two spans — that is, a pier in the middle.

The other two-span bridges are the Watson Settlement Bridge over the Meddinekeag Stream in the Aroostook town of Littleton, and the Porter-Parsonfield Bridge over the Ossipee River at Porter. The Morse Bridge in Bangor is the longest of Maine’s covered bridges, 212 feet. The shortest is Bablis Bridge over the Presumpscot River at South Windham, 66 feet. The other six of Maine’s existing covered bridges are located as follows: Lovejoy Bridge over the Ellis River at South Andover; Hemlock Bridge over the old. abandoned channel of the Saco River at East Fryeburg; the Bennett Bridge across the Magalloway at Wilson’s Mills far up in the Rangeley region; the Sunday River Bridge at Newry; the Robyville Bridge over the Kenduskeag northwest of Bangor; and Lowe’s Bridge across the Piscataquis at Sangerville.

Maine’s ten covered bridges are confined to five counties. Eleven of Maine’s sixteen counties, including both Kennebec and Somerset, have no remaining covered bridge. Of the ten bridges, five are in Oxford County, two are in Penobscot, and one each in Aroostook, Cumberland and Piscataquis.

May these last of our covered bridges be faithfully and lovingly preserved is our devout wish as we say Goodnight for Old Times’ Sake.

Year: 1959