Grays Sugarhouse Bridge
Franklin County, Ashfield. Built 1994, 20 ft. long. A small King post bridge built by a Scoutmaster and his Boy Scout troop.
Grays Sugarhouse Bridge is the smallest of Massachusetts's thirteen authentic covered bridges, a 20-foot King post span crossing a small tributary of the Bear River in Ashfield. It was designed and built in 1994 by private contractor and local Scoutmaster Dwight Scott, with help from his Boy Scout troop — a genuine community project rather than a state or town commission, in keeping with the do-it-yourself tradition that produced several of the newer covered bridges scattered across Franklin County's hill towns.
The bridge sits on private land near Gray's Sugarhouse, a working maple syrup operation that has been part of Ashfield's agricultural life for generations. Modest as it is, the bridge is a working example of King post construction, the simplest of the historic truss forms, built from not much more than two diagonal braces meeting at a central vertical post — proof that a covered bridge doesn't need centuries of history or hundreds of feet of span to earn a place in the record.