By STEVEN JUPITER
BRANDON—Few existing structures trigger nostalgia for days of yore like covered bridges. They evoke horse-drawn buggies and farmers carting their wares to market. They’re romantic and picturesque remnants of an earlier time.
These structures have a fan club here in Vermont: the Vermont Covered Bridge Society (VCBS), a nonprofit “dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Vermont’s remaining covered bridges.” The VCBS has about 200 members.
Scott and Barbara Scribner moved to Brandon from Florida in 2022, taking over the proprietorship of the Inn on Park Street. They’re also now enthusiastic members of VCBS, with Scott now the organization’s membership chairperson.
“We love history and architecture,” said Scott in the parlor of their B & B. “When we drove up here from Florida to find a B & B to buy, we went on a covered bridge tour in Vermont and New Hampshire.”
“We saw a sign for a covered bridge and followed it,” added Barbara. “We just kept googling ‘covered bridge’ and used GPS to find our way.”
When they hosted an event for the Brandon Museum at their B & B last fall, the Scribners met Beth Brown, a volunteer for the Museum who is also Chair of the Rutland County chapter of the VCBS. They immediately connected over their shared love of covered bridges and the Scribners
Our immediate area is fortunate to have 5 of these bridges still standing, 1 in Brandon and 4 in Pittsford. All but 1 (in Pittsford) are still open to vehicular traffic. And all require care and maintenance to remain intact, sometimes even to the point of major reconstruction.
The Sanderson bridge on Pearl Street in Brandon, for example, had become so unstable by the 1990s that a temporary bridge was constructed to bypass it. In 2003, the present structure was erected to replace the dilapidated original.
Sometimes it’s not even a bridge’s age that’s the issue: in the era of GPS—where the shortest route is always the “best” route—trucks often cause damage when attempting to cross covered bridges. Trucks sometimes get stuck and require assistance as well.
In Pittsford, residents of residents have approached the Selectboard there about providing more space for trucks to turn around once they realize they won’t be able to cross the Cooley Bridge that crosses Furnace Brook and the Gorham Bridge (rehabbed in 2003) that crosses Otter Creek and connects Pittsford and Proctor (each town owns its respective half of the bridge). Both of these bridges date to the 1840s. The other covered bridges in Pittsford are the Depot Hill bridge on Depot Hill Road and the Hammond bridge just next to Kendall Hill Road. Both of these bridges straddle Otter Creek. The Hammond bridge is not open to traffic.
“We need people and money,” said Scott Scribner. “The towns that own the bridges are responsible for them, but if there isn’t enough money, our group chips in. That’s where the money from the organization goes.”
VCBS also decorates the bridges for the holidays. Beth Brown has overseen the decoration of all the covered bridges in Rutland County since 2022.
Anyone interested in helping to support and maintain Vermont’s covered bridges can join the VCBS. Individual memberships are currently $10/year for individuals and $15/year for families. You can find out more at vermontbridges.org, the VCBS’s website.
For those interested in reading about Vermont’s covered bridges, Beth Brown recommends the book Spanning Time: Vermont’s Covered Bridges by Joe Nelson. The Scribners’ favorites in the state include the covered bridges in Quechee and Arlington.
If you’re looking for an excuse to get out of the house this winter, consider a driving tour of Vermont’s covered bridges!
