Podunk Grist Mill Bridge, South Windsor, CT

The Podunk Grist Mill Bridge

I just discovered Dale Travis' master list of Connecticut covered bridges and thought to myself, these can't be real covered bridges. There's only three -- the West Cornwall one, the Bulls Bridge, and the Comstock Covered Bridge. How can there be dozens?

Well, by including ones that have never carried traffic. But that's okay, because even a decorative covered bridge is at least decorative :)

I checked through the list for some bridges close to my apartment. It's a holiday and I'm not going to get my daily miles in commuting to work so I'd need to go somewhere else (trying to hit 4000 miles on the odometer by Friday, you see). A new bridge is just the thing.

The Mill on the River Bridge takes patrons of the Mill on the River Restaurant from the parking lot to the eatery. It crosses the Podunk River at a dam.

According to the South Windsor History brochure, this covered bridge was historically a foot bridge (probably uncovered) between the grist mill and a saw mill that stood where the parking lot stands now:

In the northern part of town, another crop was raised in large quantities. This was rye; and another street came to be named after it. Rye Street ran through the high land east of the Scantic River. The production of rye led to the building of many distilleries. The Podunk Grist Mill was first built in 1750 and later rebuilt in 1775 after a flood carried off the first mill. The original dam built for the mill was constructed by colonists and Indians, It was first run by Samuel Rockwell. There was a saw mill on the other side of the river and a footbridge connecting the two. Corn, buckwheat and rye were ground at the mill.

It's appropriate on this Independence Day that I'm writing about a bridge originally built just one year before the first Independence Day!