From the archives: Ashland Mill Bridge, Jewett City, CT

I had a flat tire on the bike and an early meeting, so I wasn't able to get the bridge I wanted to photograph today. Tomorrow's going to be kinda cruddy, weather-wise, as well. So tonight, one from the archives: a footbridge across a canal in Jewett City.

By itself, it isn't that amazing or historic; it's not that different from ornamental footbridges in any town in the country. Just downstream from this bridge, though, recently stretched the famous Ashland Mill Bridge. Though dripping with history, it had become dangerous and closed to all traffic. A park had grown up around it. There was a new bridge. The old one was demolished.

Jewett City has that kind of small town beauty that you often hear about but rarely find -- and never close to cities. Driving through the town sent me right back to my childhood in Linwood, Massachusetts, a village even _smaller_ than Jewett City. Not that there's any sort of contest going on.

Near where I grew up

Anyway. Ashland Mill Bridge. According to the Public Archaeology site, the Ashland Mill Bridge was one of two bridges in the area constructed by the Berlin Iron Bridge company and of which was said:

The two bridges made by you, of iron, are in place. . . . I am very much pleased with them, and am satisfied that they are constructed on the right principle and are destined to be the bridge of the future.


So there you have it. The bridge of the future almost, but not quite, made it to the present.

Notre Dame Bridge, Manchester, NH

When I was a kid, our family lived in Linwood, Massachusetts, but all our grandparents were in Concord, New Hampshire, where both my parents had been raised. The long, two and a half hour ride in one of Dad's huge, boat-like cars was marked by three landmarks: Whalom Park, an amusement park I never had a chance to see before it closed; the diner on the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border that served french fries in a paper boat; and the huge arch of the Notre Dame Bridge in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Seeing that bridge meant we were almost to grammy's. Grammy Holloway drove me over it once in her old beige VW Beetle (though I guess it wasn't old then). It was -- incredible. I was living in California when they tore it down and replaced it with an utterly non-descript bridge. I found some video on YouTube of the bridge's last moments.