About

The Moxley Covered Bridge, also called the Guy Bridge, carries Moxley Road over the First Branch of the White River about 2.5 miles south of Chelsea village, a short way east of Vermont Route 110. It is a single-span multiple kingpost truss with a truss length of about 56 feet and a one-lane roadway. It is Chelsea's only surviving 19th-century covered bridge and the northernmost of the bridges on the First Branch.

History

The Vermont Covered Bridge Society (VCBS) and coveredbridges.net date the bridge to 1883, and VCBS names Arthur Adams as the builder; Wikipedia gives about 1886 to 1887. The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 10, 1974. A 2016 engineering study found structural issues that needed attention, and VCBS reported that the work had not been funded at that time.

Design

A multiple kingpost truss is a row of vertical posts with diagonal braces leaning toward the center of the span. Here the trusses use wrought iron rods and are offset from one another, giving the bridge a parallelogram shape, and VCBS notes its long hand-hewn bottom chords. A laminated beam bolted under the floor planking adds strength, and a wooden ramp at the north portal helps keep water off the deck. The bridge rests on dry-laid stone abutments faced with concrete, and the southern abutment sits on a prominent rock outcrop. It has a metal roof and vertical board siding.