It was finally removed in to allow a new bridge to be constructed there that was more appropriate for accommodating railroad tracks. Most covered bridges in the United States were built between and , with the highest concentration of construction being conducted between and The longest covered bridge ever built in the United States was built across the Susquehanna River in At 5, feet long, it was washed away during the flooding of The mids brought cheaper versions of wrought and cast iron to the world, and the trusses of covered bridges began to be built with this metal instead of wood.
Architects found that the metal trusses did not need to be protected from the elements like the wood ones did, and so the coverings on the bridges were no longer necessary elements of the construction.
Also, with higher traffic using the bridges, most people did not want to wait their turn to use a single lane bridge, and so bridge construction moved away toward covered one-lane bridges and to uncovered two-lane bridges. The United States is not the only place in North America that has covered bridges. Canada also has them. But, like in the United States, changing times have greatly reduced the number of them that were once in Canada.
There were about a thousand covered bridges in Quebec alone in Since , the number of covered bridges that still exist in the entire Canadian nation went from about four hundred to under two hundred. Compared to the United States, Canada was relatively late to the game in getting covered bridges into their country. The greatest number of covered bridges in Canada were constructed in the s, far after the United States had stopped building them at all. The initial design of Canadian covered bridges was quite varied, but they standardized by about to the Town Quebecois variety, which was a variation on the lattice truss design that the town of Ithiel patented in About five hundred of these Town Quebecois covered bridges were built between and The last covered bridge known to have been built in Canada was constructed in in Lebel Sur Quevillon in Quebec.
Canada can also boast being the home to the current longest covered bridge in the world. This is the Hartland Bridge in New Brunswick. New Brunswick had about four hundred covered bridges in , but now has fifty-eight in the entire province.
Because they are romantic in nature and appearance, covered bridges have appeared, and even played important, central roles, in some modern works of fiction. Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. Stephen Farrugia, Sydney Australia To keep snow off the bridge roadway in the winter. In areas with very high snowfall, such as Vermont, the weight of snow could demolish a wooden bridge as most were.
A sloping roof allowed the snow to fall harmlessly into the river. The old abutments were raised 5 feet and reinforced with stone ice breakers constructed for protection, a likely clue that the earlier loss had been due to flood or ice Fig.
A petition to the New York State Assembly dated January 12, , which was acknowledged by the Clerk of the Assembly on August 14, , affirmed that the rebuilt Phillies Bridge was completed. A subsequent petition from the subscribers who supported the erection of the bridge made the case that the funds approved in May were insufficient and asked the Legislature to pass an Act directing the County Board of Supervisors to raise enough funds to make up for the shortfall.
That such an act does not appear in the records suggests either that a formal act was not required, the issue was addressed administratively, or was insufficiently compelling to move forward legislatively. As mentioned above, just 5 years after the rebuilding of Phillies Bridge, a legislative Act dated April 11, led to the rebuilding of the New Paltz Bridge. Given that we have clear documentation that a Town lattice truss was employed in in the rebuilding of Phillies Bridge, there is high probability that the same truss type was used in the reconstruction of the New Paltz Bridge, just 4 miles north of Phillies Bridge.
There is also firm information from a newspaper note indicating that interior arches were subsequently installed in January , a pattern often used with Town lattice trusses. Footnote 16 By mid-century, arches were being added to Town lattice trusses to strengthen and increase load capacity of the bridge.
We can glimpse both of these through a narrow gap near the roof of the New Paltz Bridge photograph, thus the photograph is after A photograph of the interior of Phillies Bridge, rebuilt after the likely flood and that survived to , clearly shows a Town lattice with an auxiliary arch, although there is no newspaper or other report of its installation Fig.
Early 20th century photographs of side and interior views of Phillies Bridge show the presence of arches, just as can be seen in the photograph of the New Paltz Bridge Fig. While not foolproof, this cross-referencing of documentation of nearby bridges is compelling.
Available information that these timber bridges had trusses—first a variant of the Burr truss, then replacement with a Town lattice truss, and afterwards with an arch added—underscores that bridges are not immutable over their lifespan, that covering helps lengthen lifespan, that wooden bridges require maintenance, even re-building with a different truss, and that whatever the structure, each is susceptible to both structural deterioration as well as impacts from the kind of seasonal freshets and ice flows that periodically impact the Wallkill River Valley.
Since newspapers after reported news of such natural occurrences regularly, it can be assumed that such events occurred earlier but were not publicly recounted. Gaps in the documentary records unfortunately disguise some of the physical changes that took place with both the New Paltz Bridge and Phillies Bridge over seven decades.
Yet, it is clear that from until near the end of the 19th century, a covered bridge crossed the Wallkill River at the foot of Main Street in the village. As discussed above, reports indicate that major renovations were approved in and completed around One of iron, and without covering would be in keeping with the car of progress. The old one is quite dilapidated, especially on the north side, and we have our doubts about its [sic] being safe at the present time.
An iron bridge, like the one in Alligerville is needed. No more wooden ones. People who cross do so at their own risk. A temporary bridge was placed for interim use. Footnote 20 In late July, the flooring of the old wooden bridge was removed and placed on the temporary crossing a bit downstream at the old scow and trestle bridge location.
New stone abutments were constructed, iron components for the new bridge arrived, and road approach work continued into mid-October. Gillett and son were the first to drive a drove of cattle over the new iron bridge in New Paltz. The iron bridge crossing at the foot of Main Street in New Paltz was a critically important node linking the broader community in the Wallkill River Valley to the commercial core for nearly a half century.
It was condemned in , then replaced in with the iron components sold for scrap, melted, and used to make weapons for the unfolding war effort. The two-lane bridge served as the crossing until October when it was replaced by a two-lane weathering steel through-truss bridge. Nearby areas were part of the Perrine farm. Since no contracts exist for the original s construction of these three bridges, the carpenters and crew must for the moment be unnamed, yet were skilled working with timber in building dwellings, churches, and halls on land.
It is possible that one or more master carpenters visited the Union Bridge across the Hudson River near Albany that had been erected in and covered in , or the Bridgeville Bridge that was once in the southern part of Ulster County, or another timber bridge somewhere in the region, using variants of the arch to support bridges of these lengths.
The situation was quite unlike the erecting of covered bridges in the last quarter of the century where there were known construction firms doing the work in many counties throughout the USA. Since the commissioners were also investors in the projects, they had an incentive to choose wisely. Still, actual labour on bridge projects was empirical and pragmatic, and certainly not based on engineering concepts and stress analysis as was the case later in the century.
What bridge builders could draw upon was experience, common sense, and ingenuity as they tackled issues relating to joining timbers in optimal ways for strength and longevity. Inevitably, there were failures that needed to be corrected, which is one reason that structures were warranted for at least a year. Subsequent documented allocations for minor repairs are common in minutes of the New Paltz Town Road and Bridges Committee. I acknowledged then that there were earlier authorized bridges at the site but presumed that they were not covered.
This is unlike the New Paltz Bridge and Phillies Bridge that began with some variant of an arch before being rebuilt with a Town lattice truss, then years later had an arch added to lengthen their lifespan. While it is not possible to assess how much old wood was recycled with each of these rebuildings, it is reasonable to believe that carpenters of the time would not have been wasteful with timber that remained from earlier bridges. New York Legislative Acts authorising the erecting of most bridges in the early 19th century, as discussed earlier, did not specify that a bridge was to be covered, nor state the building material—timber—nor the structure supporting it—truss type or trestle.
The enabling legislation focused instead on identifying the commissioners, time frame, and sometimes tolls for specific users. It was common to indicate if the bridge funding was by private subscription or whether it required additional tax levies. Unfortunately, there are no meteorological records to tell us whether the river was frozen during the winter, which might have facilitated erection process. Footnote 24 Whether these repairs were normal maintenance or resulted from structural difficulties that required remedy is not clear.
There were more than one thousand workers employed at the mill complex by mid-century. Footnote 26 What was necessary to create a temporary crossing has not been verified. Footnote 29 Since rivers often served as natural boundaries, it is unclear what led to the decision for the administrative boundary of the Town of Esopus to reach south beyond the river into the Town of New Paltz.
In any case, there is no subsequent record that the road and competing bridge were constructed. This rebuild employed a Burr truss that continued to support the bridge until restoration in and now to the present in Wood, the carpenter, crafted each of the Burr trusses from mature white pine trees, as confirmed by studies done when the bridge was rebuilt, and the arches repaired in Paul Huth, Director of Research Emeritus at the Mohonk Preserve, did an analysis in of a cross section of one of the surviving arch timbers and of incremental borings.
He counted some annual rings and estimated about an additional 10 rings had been lost in the arch preparation, thus determining that the tree that ultimately served as an arch started growing between and Fig.
Specimen and notes in the personal collection of Ronald G. Footnote 31 The John R. Wood farm was auctioned on March 12, Footnote 32 This corrects claims that it was Benjamin Wood — who built the bridge in , as he had died by then. Footnote While there were notices in local newspapers, none refer specifically to the condition of the bridge.
Footnote 34 Visual evidence from the photographs suggest periodic minor repairs in subsequent years, but no full-scale restoration until While the loss of skirting boards on the exterior are obvious, it is the lack of maintenance of the triangular skirts protecting the ends of the timber arches where they seated into the stone abutments that were especially detrimental.
Earlier photographs show the skirts in place, but decade-by-decade these critical coverings disappeared.
The net result was that water entered the timbers, leading to rotting and destabilisation of the arches that impacted the integrity of the overall structure. The alignment of a new route north of New Paltz to Kingston in the early s straightened and widened the old route leaving just fractured portions signed today as Old Kingston Road. Footnote 35 The limited view of the truss system in the interior reveals it was in reasonable shape although the exposed arches outside indicated deterioration.
The HABS photo clearly shows not only a missing skirt where the arches were set into the abutments, but also the reasonably good shape of longer sections of the arch in the interior.
The HABS drawings proved an important resource for later restoration. Footnote 36 While this was the first such public effort, no one could have foreseen the twists and turns that would take place over the next 30 years before restoration was completed.
In April , the bridge was condemned and barricaded to vehicular traffic. Footnote 37 Photographs taken in show siding had been replaced. The explanation below is only suggestive of the breadth of the decades of contention that played out in community meetings that are well documented in newspapers.
Responding to public uproar, the Thruway route was moved about ft west, as depicted in these May 9, and January 29, photographs of the juxtaposed timber bridge and the divided highway Figs. There was optimism that repairs would be made to keep the bridge from collapsing. The County authorised a bidding process for repairs in February , but only nine local contractors refused to submit bids.
Subsequently, a second proposal the next month gained two bids. Knapp, January 28, Somewhat surprising to those who had accomplished a victory with the Thruway alignment, a vigorous opposition to saving the bridge was launched after a major flood in August Fig.
This opposition continued for more than a decade, much of it from a group called Wallkill River Valley Flood Control Committee led by prominent community members. That was followed by contrasting sustained and increasing demands to preserve the bridge. Record breaking floods impacted the northeastern section of the United States in August The bottomlands along the full length of the Wallkill River were extensively inundated as depicted here at the bridge in the village of New Paltz.
What is not shown on the left are the submerged stone abutments that remained from the earlier covered bridge and iron bridge. There is little doubt that the destructive power of this flood would have swept away the earlier bridges. There were signs of optimism and progress, but also of concern and despair. Nearly signatures eventually were collected county-wide on a petition by Kingston Boy Scout Troop 4 in support of preservation that was presented to Governor Averell Harriman in January Additional national, state, and local endorsements also were secured well into the s.
Preservationists vehemently objected to removal as the battle raged in the press and on banners hung on the side of the bridge. More than 12, covered bridges have dotted the American landscape, with approximately 3, in Ohio. However, today in central Ohio covered bridges are very hard to find. Recently, I went on assignment to photograph covered bridges. Spanning five counties in two weekends, I was disappointed to see that many of the bridges had vanished.
Some have been moved to private land or parks, some are gone and I could not locate two of them. Very few of the existing ones are used anymore.
One bridge's interior was covered with spray painted graffiti. In the countryside of remote Delaware County, the bridge was located in a sparsely populated area making it vulnerable to night vandals.
A trip to southern Fairfield County provided a glimpse of a foot truss type covered bridges that had been build in , and one hundred years later moved and partially rebuilt on private property. Several photographs proved useless due to the present day items blocking part of the bridge from the camera.
Another bridge could not be located at all.
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