Ware-Hardwick Covered Bridge
Hampshire/Worcester County, Gilbertville (Ware and Hardwick). Built 1886, 137 ft. long. A Town lattice truss bridge shared by two towns, reopened in 2010 with no weight limit.
The Ware-Hardwick Covered Bridge, also known as the Gilbertville or Ware Bridge, spans the Ware River between the towns of Ware and Hardwick, carrying Old Gilbertville Road and Bridge Street through the village of Gilbertville. Built in 1886 on the lattice truss design Ithiel Town patented in 1820, it's a single span running roughly 137 feet long and 25 feet wide, clad in vertical board siding under a gabled metal roof — one of a small number of surviving 19th-century covered bridges left in the state.
The bridge survived a major flood in the 1930s that destroyed the textile mills powering Gilbertville, a stroke of luck that speaks to the flood-resistant design covered bridges were built for in the first place. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and extensively rebuilt that same year and the next. Structural issues and a weight limit forced its closure in 2002, but it reopened in October 2010 following renovations, and Massachusetts's transportation department has since removed the weight restriction entirely — it now carries traffic between the two towns without limits, a rare distinction for a 19th-century wooden bridge.