Tag: bridge

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

When Railroads Were King

Jericho Crossing at Thomaston (Jericho Bridge over the Naugatuck River, Thomaston, Connecticut)

The Jericho Bridge, its weathered girder frame showing all 112 years of its age, spans the shadow-laden waters of the Naugatuck River amidst the wooded hills in Thomaston. Although it’s January in the valley and shelf ice is forming along the river banks, the molten light of dawn imparts the comforting illusion of warmth.

It’s difficult to overstate how big railroads used to be in Connecticut: not just in terms of their sprawl throughout the state, which was impressive, but in terms of the degree to which they dominated transportation. When the Jericho Bridge was built in 1907 to carry a line of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad over the Naugatuck, it was just one, tiny facet of an immense railroad monopoly that would’ve seemed virtually infinite in its influence and power.

And yet, before Jericho Bridge had even a spot of rust, things were to begin slowly changing for the once-untouchable railroad giant. In time, the rise of automobiles and the subsequent development of highways changed the way we traveled, changed the way we transported goods and changed our society, in general. The Golden Age of the Railroad was arguably over by the 1920s and 1930s… though the industry struggled forth even as its eventual demise grew ever more imminent. All the Northeastern railroad titans just slowly fizzled away over decades of steady decline; most were ghosts of their former selves by the 1960s and 1970s, if they hadn’t thrown in the towel altogether. Remarkably, the Jericho Bridge and the Naugatuck line is still active to this day, though I can’t think of a time I’ve ever seen a single car on its tracks.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Waterville Echoes

Sheffield Revenant (Old Sheffield Street Iron Bridge, Mattatuck State Forest, Waterbury, Connecticut, USA)
“Sheffield Revenant”
Old Sheffield Street Iron Bridge,
Mattatuck State Forest, Waterbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

The year was 1884. The Waterville manufacturing district in the north of Waterbury had grown to be quite the industrial powerhouse, churning out a seemingly endless supply of brass and cutlery. But Hancock Brook, a tributary of the Naugatuck River which coursed through a steep ravine along Sheffield Street, was a routine impediment to the transport of goods eastward.

Iron Relic of Waterville (Old Sheffield Street Iron Bridge, Mattatuck State Forest, Waterbury, Connecticut)
“Iron Relic of Waterville”
Old Sheffield Street Iron Bridge,
Mattatuck State Forest, Waterbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

In an era when wooden covered bridges were still being phased out of mainstream construction in New England, the famous Berlin Iron Bridge Company was contracted to build a hefty iron bridge over Hancock Brook that would accommodate two lanes and exceptionally heavy loads. For years afterward, as countless tons of product fresh from the Waterville factories began their journey to distant destinations, they first cleared Hancock Brook over the Sheffield Street Bridge.

But that was then; this is now. As Waterbury’s golden age of manufacturing declined, the industrial landscape it occupied atrophied and eventually grew wilder than it had been in over a century. Today, the forgotten bridge off Sheffield rusts away in the forest near an isolated quarry. Much of the old wooden decking has long-since decayed, though stray planks sometimes still break free and plunge into the waters below. All that remains of the Sheffield Street Bridge is a haunting, iron skeleton hung high above Hancock Brook… an eerie, lonesome witness of bygone times marooned in a vastly different world from the one in which it was born.

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New Print Releases The American Northeast

Goreham’s Crossing at Pittsford

Goreham’s Crossing at Pittsford (Goreham Bridge over Otter Creek, Pittsford & Proctor, Vermont)
“Goreham’s Crossing at Pittsford”
Goreham Bridge over Otter Creek, Pittsford & Proctor, Vermont
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

As I stood upon a muddy riverbank during a warm spring morning in Vermont’s Rutland County, I watched reflections of the weathered Goreham Bridge ripple upon Otter Creek beneath a hazy sky streaked with broad, indistinct swaths of luminous blues. My piece, “Goreham’s Crossing at Pittsford”, emerged from that moment and brings together several elements which elaborate upon the sense of place wrapped up in this rustic riverscape in the Green Mountain State.

Built in 1842 and carrying traffic to this day, Goreham Bridge is one of four 19th-century covered bridges remaining in the rural town of Pittsford. That’s no small feat when you consider that the entire state of Connecticut has only three! But the town of Montgomery, about 100 miles north near the Canadian border, can justifiably be called Vermont’s “covered bridge capital”. Remarkably, seven covered bridges are scattered across the township’s 56 square miles.

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