In Memoriam: Troy’s Only Covered Bridge

The River Road covered bridge in Troy, Vermont collapsed in February due to a fire. (Anna Van Dine/VPR)

Over the weekend, the only covered bridge in the Northeast Kingdom town of Troy burned down. Many in town are mourning the loss of the 111-year-old landmark.

Just before noon on Saturday, Feb. 6, Heather Lighty was sitting on the couch with her husband. He showed her a video someone had posted online. It was of the covered bridge in Troy.

“I just, instantly started crying,” she recalled. “I called my mom, and I’m like, ‘Mom, mom, our bridge!’ She goes, ‘What about our bridge?’ I’m like, ‘It’s burning!’”

It was. The only covered bridge remaining in Troy, it stretched 92 feet across the Missisquoi River and 111 years of time itself. It was built in 1910 by the rough hands and old-time ingenuity of local farmers whose names don’t show up in history books. Draft horses likely dragged the timber to the riverbank, and the bridge-builders carefully assembled the wood into a style known as Town lattice truss.

“In the inside, you can see all this like, criss-crossing of the wood,” Lighty said. “And it almost looks kind of mysterious… it made noises underneath your feet when you walked on it. And you could do the echo, like you could holler and hear the echo.”

Read the rest of the story at VPR’s website.