Photo by Dougtone (CC BY-SA 2.0, via Openverse) — original

Comstock's Bridge: Connecticut's Little Howe Truss on the Salmon River

Connecticut doesn't come up much when people talk covered bridges. Vermont hogs the postcards, Pennsylvania has the numbers, and Oregon has the moss. Connecticut has three historic covered bridges, and the one on the Salmon River in East Hampton is the easiest to like: small, a little crooked-looking in the best way, and parked in a public park where you can walk right into it.

A town that couldn't get to church

The reason it exists goes back to 1785. Residents south of the Salmon River, then part of Chatham, had a miserable time crossing to church and business, and some of them grumbled about joining a different town altogether. Officials petitioned the General Assembly for money. The first span, an uncovered one, took about six years to finish. Nothing about this bridge started as a postcard.

The bridge you see today dates to 1873, when the town spent $4,000 rebuilding it. Colchester and Chatham are credited with putting up the 80-foot covered span together. It carries the name of Franklin G. Comstock, East Hampton's first postmaster, which tells you something about how much a reliable crossing mattered to anyone moving mail and people through town.

Howe truss, no frills

Structurally it's a Howe truss, the design William Howe patented in 1840: heavy timber diagonals in compression, with vertical iron rods taking the tension. It's a workhorse layout, and it's why so many bridges of this era could be built by local crews with a stack of lumber and some blacksmith work. The roadbed is just 12 feet wide, which means two wagons did not pass in the middle without negotiation. A second, uncovered 30-foot span links the covered section to the east bank, so the whole crossing is a bit lopsided.

Photo by Tony Fischer Photography (CC BY 2.0, via Openverse) — original

Step inside and the framing does the talking. The light drops, the boards go dark, and the timber is all heavy joints and old bolts. It's the best argument I know for why people bothered to roof these things at all: a cover kept rain and snow off the structural wood, which is what rots first.

Trucks, the CCC, and a near collapse

For close to 60 years it was a main route between Colchester and Middletown, until vehicles got too heavy for it. One truck went through the floor in the 1920s and did major damage. In the 1930s a Civilian Conservation Corps crew restored the bridge, patching it partly with salvaged material from old buildings and adding wooden gates at both ends. A concrete bridge went in about 500 feet downstream and took over the traffic.

The close call came in 1969. Rotted timbers had the bridge sagging toward the water, and temporary supports kept it standing until major renovations in the early 1970s, which added steel plates to reinforce the joints. A few years later, in 1976, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Not a bad turnaround for a bridge that was visibly giving up.

Visiting

Today it's closed to vehicles and open to people on foot, tucked into a small park off Comstock Bridge Road near Route 16. You can park, walk through, and stand on the bridge where the cars once stopped being able to fit. Go on a quiet weekday morning and it's easy to hear the river.

It won't be the grandest covered bridge you ever see. But it's survived a petition, a truck, rot, and a near collapse, and it's still there for the price of a short walk.

Photo credits: Exterior photo by Dougtone, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Interior photo by Tony Fischer Photography, licensed CC BY 2.0. Both via Openverse.

Sources: Connecticut History, Wikipedia.