Vermont Covered Bridge (Taft Bridge)

This bridge began its life far from Massachusetts, built around 1870 (some sources say 1874) to carry a road over a stream in Dummerston, Vermont. When Vermont highway planners marked it for demolition to make way for new road construction in the early 1950s, Old Sturbridge Village stepped in and bought the condemned bridge from the Vermont Highway Department for one dollar. It was carefully dismantled, trucked south, and re-erected on the museum's grounds in 1951-1952, where it now carries a footpath over an arm of the Quinebaug River.

The bridge is a fine example of the single-web, single-chord wooden lattice truss that Connecticut architect Ithiel Town patented in 1820 — a design so simple and inexpensive to build that it spread across the country through the mid-1800s. Also known as the Dummerston or Vermont Bridge, it's one of thirteen authentic covered bridges left standing in Massachusetts today, doing its second century of service as a living exhibit at one of New England's best-known history museums.