Covered Bridge - Old Sturbridge Village, MA
N 42° 06.357 W 072° 05.753
18T E 740123 N 4665622
This covered bridge is located in Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. Old Sturbridge Village is a recreated town and living history museum.
Waymark Code: WM6GXD
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Posted: 06/02/2009
Views: 28
Old Sturbridge Village (OSV) is a recreated town where historic buildings were brought together to demonstrate New England rural life from 1790-1840. One of the structures there is this covered bridge constructed in Dummerston, Vermont, in 1874. Known then as the Taft Bridge, it was dismantled and reconstructed over the Quinebaug River in OSV in 1952. This bridge is an example of the 1820 lattice-truss bridge design patented by Ithiel Town of Connecticut in 1820.
Old Sturbridge Village website: (
visit link)
There is an admission fee to visit the village.
Village Entrance and Parking: N 42 06.528 W 072 05.947
The bridge has an interesting bit of history once it came to OSV (from the OSV website):
... on August 18, [1955,] Hurricane Diane arrived with little advance warning. It proved to be the most powerful storm in decades, even worse than the 1938 hurricane that had ravaged the prewar Village. Gale-force winds and torrential rains pummeled the area. ...
The Village took the brunt of the storm along with hundreds of businesses and thousands of residents. Fortunately no lives were lost at the museum, but 15 staff members were stranded for three days by the rising waters. The low-lying area where the Freeman Farmhouse then stood was inundated, and the Covered Bridge was washed off its foundation. It was saved by the heroics of a Village damage control team who, at considerable risk, lashed the floating bridge to trees on the bank of the Mill Pond.
The stranded Villagers were fed by helicopter supply drops for three days. Flood waters receded to show extensive damage to Village exhibits and landscape-over $250,000 in 1955 dollars, at least ten times that sum today.