 This is Dennis McMahon and welcome to Positively Vermont. Today we are going to be exploring the wonderful world of Vermont's covered bridges, a local and New England icon, and a very interesting group of people called the Vermont Covered Bridge Society. And my guests today are Joe Nelson, who is a founding member of the Vermont Covered Bridge Society, author of the book, Spanning Time, Vermont's Covered Bridges, and Steve Miyamoto, the publicity coordinator for the Society. Welcome gentlemen. Thanks. First of all, tell us a little bit about each one of you. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became involved with Vermont's Covered Bridges. Well, how Vermont Covered Bridges got started. The story begins in Jeffersonville, where the Cambridge Junction Bridge was in deep trouble, being quite an old bridge, as a matter of fact. And a gentleman, Bill McCone, was interested in having that bridge rescued, called on Ed Barnard and myself because we're both authors of Covered Bridge books, to join his Historical Society as the Covered Bridge Committee, which we let him know that, well, we weren't terribly interested in being part of his Historical Society. We would be interested in having a statewide Covered Bridge Society. So that's where we got started, organizing from there. We founded it in the May of 2000, as a nonprofit 501c3 organization, dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Vermont's remaining Covered Bridges. Since our founding, we've commended ourselves to generating public awareness through our various means, like we have a quarterly newsletter, which we mail out to interested people like V-Trans and like the governor and members of the legislature. And we also have a VermontCoveredBridge.com website and connections with V-Trans Construction Division. Can I tell us a little about yourself, Steve? I am from New York originally, moved to Vermont in 1993. My employer gave me an opportunity to relocate at the time. So I've been here since 1993, got involved with the Covered Bridge Society, and pretty close to when it started, funny story is, my wife actually saw a little blurb in the newspaper about the Vermont Covered Bridge Society forming. She said, why don't you look into it? So I did. So I did that and have been involved on and off, took some time off for a while. But yeah, that was my involvement there. That's great. Well, tell us a little about what is a Covered Bridge? A lot of people might not know it. They might see it on a calendar or on a Christmas card. Tell us, what is a Covered Bridge? Basically, it's a wooden bridge, okay? Our forebears, of course, came across many of them, English and so on, were acquainted with the construction of the old buildings over there. And they brought that knowledge with them. And of course they came into a wilderness, Vermont, for instance, was a wilderness. No roads, you could get around on the rivers and so on. They would come through those woods, creating new pathways and so on, and they'd come to rivers and they'd have to ford them. Okay, ultimately, they widened those pathways and they used their fords and they cleared forest and they planted their crops and then they had to take their crops then and find a place to get them ground. Well, one way to do that would be to an old tree stump and make a pestle out of it, a mortar and pestle out of it, and grind their corn or they could carry all of this unground corn on their backs through the fords, through these ancient roadways until finally they had enough people out there that they began using these rivers then to create mills where they could grind corn and people would come to them. Now you still had to cross those rivers, so they put logs across and people would walk across on a log bridge until they come to a river, you know, that would be too wide for that. So using the knowledge that they had brought with them, say from old England, they began to put timber bridges across and they used what they might call the royalty lot of trusses called the king post and the queen post. Now the king post bridge then you would send cords, logs across, you would board those logs so that you could say run a cart on them and then they would sag in the middle what you would do would we put up a pair of braces and from the center of those braces you would hang a post to support the middle of that bridge. That's a king post bridge and it worked from there. It was the local folks that built their own bridges because they had some knowledge. They were using the same methods that they were using to build their barns and their homes. If you wanted a longer bridge because the river is that much wider what you would do would be extend your king post truss and call it a queen post where you would put up a pair of braces separated by a horizontal beam and at each junction there would be a post to support the bridge the queen post. Things got a little bit more developed in the area. They needed longer and longer bridges and some of the local talent then not being engineers and so on would invent a new truss. Then they come up with the multiple king post truss and then later on of course we had a noted architect in Connecticut, Ithio Town however you pronounce Ithio I've never been able to discover which came up with the lattice truss and today most of the covered bridges in Vermont are lattice and they're called covered bridges because they discovered in the old days that with rain and snow and all of that would begin to rut those bridges so that you had to replace them maybe every few years when someone who built what they called the permanent bridge in Philadelphia came up with the idea of covering his bridge he said that well that would make that bridge last maybe even up to 50 years we have bridges in the state of Vermont now that are much older than 50 years because of those covers That's great, it seems so obvious but so simple but some guy had to think that up and then do it and it's created something which is a practical transportation item but also an art form in a way Oh yeah and why don't you tell us, just give us an idea you say how many bridges are there now still standing in Vermont Well there's about 102 but not all of them are terribly original because we've lost some and there's enough interest in the state government and the people of this state to maintain those bridges so if a bridge is burnt or a bridge is destroyed by a storm they're replaced in their replicas What's the newest one? The newest one would be the... there, heads gone Well I think Langley No, no, no, no my brain is right here That's your book by the way, tell us about that book Oh okay, surely Why don't you hold it up so that people can see it That's a book all about covered bridges and when did you write that? I wrote that, this was first published in 1997 and it's still going strong it's fairly popular like there's 15 tours if someone would take up one of these books there's tours laid out, 15 of them where there are maps available in the book then to take people from bridge to bridge without any trouble That covers the whole state covers the whole state Now there was a bridge that was... you're going to remember when I tell you about this we had storm Irene the Irene to tropical storms Just talking about that to somebody about an hour ago about Irene, yeah, tell us about this Okay, that storm took out the bridge where my mind seems to be blank for a moment Bartonsville, thank you You gotta be quicker The Bartonsville bridge then was carried away The reason why it was carried away wasn't a problem with the bridge itself but the river got behind the abutments and it washed it away and there was a lady there that had a video that was broadcast worldwide on the demise of that poor old bridge and people got behind it they got grants they held sales they did everything they could to gather enough money and the state, the federal government then stepped in and helped they decided then that they needed the bridge but they needed to carry more weight one of the problems with our covered bridges today of course is they were not built for 18-wheelers or modern traffic for that matter or even somebody's tour vehicle with the air conditioning on top so they made the bridge taller and they made it longer so that they could keep the abutments out of the river flow and they've got one terrific bridge you can't tell that it's not an original bridge unless you look underneath where they have something called glulam timbers which gives the bridge its carrying capacity so you've got a brand new bridge the Whatchamacallit bridge The Whatchamacallit I seem to remember Longley was built in 2018 or something that was completely replaced out in Montgomery Longley? oh yeah well ok that also is a I think that might be one of the more that is one of the things that one of the things that the covered bridges society tries to do the Longley bridge was carrying milk tank trucks and it was built back in the 1860s 18 ok and they needed to replace that bridge it had been worked on several times and the town you see V-Trans construction division is responsible for maintaining these bridges and they work with the department of the interior rules on maintaining historic structures and a bridge that has been on the historic site list ok has special privileges in its existence but overriding all of that is the town itself the town decided that they didn't want that bridge bypassed with another bridge they didn't want that old bridge replaced so that it could carry new traffic they wanted a new bridge and they got it now the Vermont covered bridge society sets up districts where we ask local talent to form a little group ok wherever there's a covered bridge in the village they're responsible for that bridge they're taxpayers they have a say on whether or not they want to spend the money on a new bridge somebody from outside are nibbers they're not going to be punished with the tax that they're accruing so they had their way they replaced a historic bridge and part of the agreement was that the construction materials for that old bridge would be saved to be put up someplace else that's really interesting it's not just the idea of historic preservation for the sake of history and architecture but it's also a cooperative effort to try to preserve, protect, and defend these bridges it's really interesting I was thinking about it in a way and it sounds like the Constitution preserve, protect, and defend and that's what you do it's an interesting historical artifice but you work to make sure that it functions and government gets involved and then people get involved I've been looking over your program as an organization and there's a number of things that you do so why don't we go into some of them right now what's this project you have called Bridge Watch what is that about? okay Bridge Watch we have John Weaver he's a retired engineer from V-Trans he's a member of the society and while he was working with V-Trans he still is, as a matter of fact they still use him that Scott Bridge thing that you might have been in the papers lately he was the designer for the reconstruction of that John is our Bridge Watch coordinator and he keeps track of what is going on with the V-Trans and what their plans are in the future for these various bridges keeps a surprise at that meanwhile each of us then are responsible when we revisit a bridge and we see that there's a problem with the bridge we have a form we fill out to send to John and John can notify the town and he can notify V-Trans beyond that we have Halloween okay and we ask the membership then wherever they live near a covered bridge to keep an eye on it so that's Bridge Watching yeah and it's a lot of just a lot of local people just happen to be in the area they just keep an eye on it that's amazing it really shows involvement almost like a local ownership of the bridge taking ownership of it well there are other things too that we'd like to do we started out this way is that you come to a bridge and it's full of wet gravel so a group of people will come there and they'll sweep it weeds are growing up around there's reeds and trash growing up around the bridge someone will come along and they'll cut it that's our sus we do that we did that until we were confronted with the problem of policing if we're in that bridge sweeping we have to be looked out for so we have to hire a policeman okay and the other thing is insurance we had to be insured and do that sort of thing we don't really have the income to be able to do that so we can look wistfully on and maybe pick up an empty paper cup or something let me ask you this we've just gone through a terrible winter and we're almost not over it so are there any particular problems that happened this winter last couple of months the normal problem then is that when a car comes through all that slush they're dragging it into the bridge now we talk about historic bridges the historic parts of a bridge is the truss itself that truss is heavy timber it needs to be preserved that's why it's coming the floors have evolved over the years the floors we have today aren't like the floors our great-grandfathers had the floors are replaced regularly when they need replacing the siding one of the problems with the siding is kids that like to swim kick the siding out expose the trusses the roofs deteriorate V-trans then took on a great job of replacing every roof of the covered bridges in the state with a new standing seam enameled steel roof before then we would have things like cedar shingle roofs which retain snow which brings us into that story in the old days during town meeting there were two projects let out when they were bid for one was the man who snows the bridge brings snow into the bridge so that the sleds can go through you can tell the season when these wagons then lose their sled skids and go back to wheels so you know spring is here there's another gentleman who bids on the job of clearing the roofs of the covered bridges that's gone by the bar now these new steel roofs these standing seam roofs shed snow so you don't have to send somebody up there at the risk of his life and limb to clear those roofs anymore but Johnson wasn't up on that they weren't snowing the bridges anymore because they didn't need to but they weren't clearing the roofs either they had a cedar shingle roof on that bridge and we took a heavy wet snow and unfortunately when that bridge was built there were no collar ties and no ties inside of the bridge other than the connections in the wood itself and what happened is that the snow pressed that roof down and the refters acted like levers kicked the trusses out the trusses dropped into the river the rest dropped down onto the floor I believe 2,000 so that's why we have steel roofs standing seam roofs well what we'd like to do because we're getting near the end is give you the opportunity to tell what you need from people and how people can get involved with this organization as a group how do they get involved what projects are you currently working on and what do you need from the public so give you that opportunity now well volunteers are always needed there's a number of different committees to get involved with membership is very easy we have just paper applications that people can fill out for membership levels of membership individuals, families life members and the cost is not that much but with that they also get a quarterly newsletter that goes with that but yeah like we were talking about with the bridge watch volunteers are needed wherever there's a bridge like Joe said they have the biggest voice they live in the town and they pay the taxes so you know those kind of representatives people that could plan events different things there's a number of things that could be done but because of lack of volunteers they're not active at the moment so publicity is always a good one legislative like we said let me ask you about this the legislative project is legislative watch what is that about? well the legislative watch is a group of us then approached the Montpelier the matter of fact it was the House of Representatives and where we were working with the the chairman of the transportation department where I don't think department is the word where we were trying to get more signage before bridges to keep the bridges from being damaged by oversized vehicles overweight vehicles going through them and we didn't have a whole lot of luck because of Vermont's laws on signage where we would have been obliged to buy the signs and then pay a fee to maintain them which was beyond our budgets so we kind of failed in that direction but there have been members who belong to towns that have the covered bridge that took an initiative like Phil Jordan do we have that picture? Phil Jordan all of his ad oh you're talking about this picture yeah that one do we have that? well anyway Phil Jordan then lives on the road where the Chiselville bridge is and he had noted that many times like an 18-wheeler would come up that road because he's been told by GPS that he could go through there so they get to that bridge and the driver stops and then at risk of life and limb and people other traffic backs that 18-wheeler gets out of that road and finds another way to go so what Phil did he got the town then to invest and I have the text there on a four warning sign that's placed out where the truck driver perhaps then can find himself another route before he commits to this trap yeah I can see that 8.2 feet that's not much that's great I mean this is really as we said before it's a lot more than just looking at paintings and pictures on postcards this is a very active thing and you could use all the help you can get both from town officials legislators and anybody who watches this program we're going to publish the website where you have a list of all the covered bridges and we also have your own website and we look forward to hearing from your projects in the future and I want to thank you for appearing on Positively Vermont this has been Joe Nelson a founding member of the Vermont Covered Bridge Society and Steve Miyamoto a publicity coordinator and an officer of the group and thank you both for appearing on Positively Vermont this is Dennis McMahon thank you for watching