Covered bridges are a staple of Vermont’s idyllic landscape, but these historic structures were made to hold horse-drawn carriages, not modern-day box trucks.
On Dec. 20, Miller’s Run bridge in Lyndon was hit by a truck too big to fit through it for the sixth time this year, prompting the town to triple the fine. Now, colliding with one of Lyndon’s historic covered bridges will cost you $5,000 the first time, $10,000 the second, and $15,000 any time after.
“It’s been simmering but now it’s coming to the surface,” Chris Thompson, Lyndon’s selectboard chair, said in a phone interview. “People are encouraging us to do more to protect the bridge and hold people accountable who hit it.”
Thompson said the goal of the fine is to recoup some of the repair costs when the bridge is hit, but he also hopes it will act as a deterrent to this ongoing issue.
“This isn’t a money-making venture, we would prefer that the fines were low and that no one hit it, but that’s not the case, that’s not reality,” Thompson said.
Vermont communities take their responsibility for upholding historic buildings seriously, but not all drivers do, ignoring signage warning height and weight limits, Vermont State Historic Preservation Officer Laura Trieschmann said.
Most of the drivers that hit Miller’s Run bridge aren’t locals, yet taxpayers have been carrying the burden of their destruction — a burden the town hopes to lift with the increased fines, Thompson said.
“We suspect that when drivers who are unfamiliar with the area use GPS that it’s sending them over the bridge and they’re not aware of the height of their vehicle, and then they’re hitting the bridge,” Thompson said.
Currently, the bridge has signs with flashing lights indicating the height limit and a camera set up on a neighboring property, but the signs are still ignored and the camera’s quality is too poor to show a license plate clearly, Thompson said.
Part of the town’s initiative is to upgrade the camera system, but it also has a plan in place that Thompson hopes will stop the collisions altogether.
“We have in the works a steel I-beam that will be placed over the roadway in front of the bridge on both approaches at either side of the bridge,” Thompson said. “It will be decorative in nature so that it doesn’t detract from how the historic bridge looks, but trucks will have to hit that metal barrier prior to even reaching the bridge.”
The steel I-beam is currently being designed by NSA industries — which is now owned by Momentum Manufacturing Group — in neighboring St. Johnsbury.
Thompson said there is not yet a timeline for the construction, but he feels confident that the beams will go up sometime in 2022, and hopes it will be early in the year.
Lyndon is home to five covered bridges. Miller’s Run and Chamberlain bridges are the only two open to vehicular traffic, so the new fines only relate to them.
However, the town’s initiative to protect its historic bridges goes further.
They’re talking about restoring the Sanborn bridge, Thompson said. Right now it is privately owned, but the town is in early negotiations to buy it, which would provide more funding opportunities for its restoration.
The Caledonian Record reported Dec. 23 that restoring the Sanborn bridge would cost an estimated $1.3 million.
Lyndon’s five covered bridges make it unique, Thompson said, and the town wants to highlight them for tourists and locals alike.
“They’re all within a 10-minute drive from each other so they could be a unique tourist destination, and we feel it’s our responsibility to protect and maintain part of Lyndon’s history and not let it deteriorate any further,” Thompson said.
According to the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation, the state had 700 covered bridges in the mid-19th century. That number went down to 600 in 1927 and less than 200 in 1940. Today, Vermont has 105 covered bridges, ranking third for the number of covered bridges in the country, following Pennsylvania and Ohio, Trieschmann said.
The loss of covered bridges is a national problem, with the main culprit being arson. To prevent this, the state so far has treated 24 covered bridges with fire retardant. The Division of Historic Preservation can coordinate this treatment for bridges that do not yet have it, possibly with the help of the National Covered Bridge Society, Trieschmann said.
The state also has removed a few active bridges, placing them in storage or altering them to allow for current vehicle weights, heights and widths, Trieschmann said.
“There are many factors affecting the future of our covered bridges; deferred or inadequate maintenance by the communities is by far the lowest on the list,” Trieschmann said.
