Coburn Covered Bridge

About

The Coburn Covered Bridge carries Coburn Road over the Winooski River in far eastern East Montpelier, about 2.7 miles east of the town center. Coburn Road runs north from U.S. Route 2 to the bridge. It is a single-span queenpost truss bridge built in 1851, about 69 feet long overall. It is one lane wide and carries vehicle traffic. It is the town's only surviving 19th-century covered bridge, and it is also called the Cemetery Bridge.

History

The Vermont Covered Bridge Society records Larned Coburn as the builder and 1851 as the year of construction. The bridge stands near a gravel quarry, and its truss carried heavy loads for many years. Repairs in 1960 and 1961 corrected sagging caused by rotting timbers. In 1972 the wooden deck was replaced with a self-supporting concrete slab carried on steel beams. The hand-worked timber truss was renovated in the winter of 1996 to 1997. The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 9, 1974.

Design

The queenpost truss uses two vertical posts joined by a horizontal beam; on the Coburn bridge iron rods are embedded in the truss. The bridge is 16.5 feet wide with a 13.5-foot, one-lane roadway.

Visiting

The bridge is on Coburn Road, north of U.S. Route 2 in East Montpelier, and is open to one lane of vehicle traffic.

Sources: Coburn Covered Bridge (Wikipedia), Coburn Covered Bridge (Vermont Covered Bridge Society)

Photo: Steven Bergeron Srbergeron, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.