Rating:
5 votes

Bellows Falls Arch Bridge

Windham County, Vermont, and Cheshire County, New Hampshire
Share:

Photos 

Credit Jtl General View Looking Upstream And Towards New Hampshire, Unidentified 'Crazy Man' Perched On Top Of Arch

Photo taken by Historic American Engineering Record

View photos at Library of Congress

Map 

Facts 

Overview
Lost steel through arch bridge over the Connecticut River between Bellows Falls, Vermont, and North Walpole, New Hampshire
Location
Windham County, Vermont, and Cheshire County, New Hampshire
Status
Replaced by a new bridge
History
Built 1905; damaged by flooding in 1936; closed to traffic 1971; demolished 1982
Builder
- J.R. Worchester (Engineer)
Design
Steel through arch
Dimensions
Total length: 644.7 ft.
Approximate latitude, longitude
+43.13792, -72.44845   (decimal degrees)
43°08'17" N, 72°26'54" W   (degrees°minutes'seconds")
Approximate UTM coordinates
18/707511/4779291 (zone/easting/northing)
USGS topographic map
Bellows Falls
Inventory number
BH 42371 (Bridgehunter.com ID)

Categories 

Arch (9,438)
Built 1905 (554)
Built during 1900s (4,266)
Cheshire County, New Hampshire (38)
Connecticut River (43)
HAER documented (784)
J.R. Worchester (1)
Lost (10,487)
Lost 1982 (51)
 Lost during 1980s (440)
New Hampshire (296)
Replaced by new bridge (7,211)
State line crossing (515)
Steel through arch (175)
Total length 500-1000 feet (1,819)
Vermont (265)
Windham County, Vermont (39)

Update Log 

  • August 24, 2011: New photo from David Backlin
  • May 31, 2011: Updated by Nathan Holth: Fixed County Listing: This Is A County Line Bridge
  • April 19, 2009: Added by James Baughn

Sources 

  • HAER NH-6 - Bellows Falls Arch Bridge, Spanning Connecticut River, North Walpole, Cheshire County, NH
  • James Baughn - webmaster [at] bridgehunter [dot] com
  • Nathan Holth
  • David Backlin - us71 [at] cox [dot] net
Post a comment here
Contact webmaster

Comments 

Bellows Falls Arch Bridge
Posted October 27, 2011, by Nathan Holth (form3 [at] historicbridges [dot] org)

Good find. The Internet Archive has a higher quality scan of this book and you can link to it: http://www.archive.org/stream/proceedings0834amer#page/202/mode/2up Also, unlike Google, the good folks over at the Archive actually unfold the plan sheets in the book and scan those too. I found some beautiful measured drawings of the arch bridge here.

Bellows Falls Arch Bridge
Posted October 27, 2011, by Will Truax (Bridgewright [at] ymail [dot] com)

In researching the RR Bridge which predated the 1882 Iron Lattice which can be seen in the distance in this image, I turned up this amazingly detailed description of the construction of the Arch Bridge -

Click on the Photo and scroll around - good stuff

???????????????????????????????????????????????????

Can you not use the Google Books clip feature here?

Go to > Google > More > Books > Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Volume 34, Part 1 - 202

Bellows Falls Arch Bridge
Posted June 10, 2011, by Clark Vance (cvance [at] dogmail [dot] com)

Shorpy posted a hi-def picture:

http://www.shorpy.com/node/10429?size=_original

This was a great looking bridge.

Bellows Falls Arch Bridge
Posted June 1, 2011, by Tony Dillon (spansaver [at] hotmail [dot] com)

I remember this one from way back when.......what an absolute waste!!!

Bellows Falls Arch Bridge
Posted June 1, 2011, by Spanfan (susorcar [at] yahoo [dot] com)

Nathan, I read a few of the other news clippings attached to your link. The bridge actually withstood FOUR (count 'em, FOUR) blast attempts to bring it down. They finally cut it apart at one end with blowtorches, & it finally fell down. And they'd closed the bridge years before for structural problems-ironic, isn't it? (no pun intended)

Bellows Falls Arch Bridge
Posted May 31, 2011, by Nathan Holth

In case anyone was wondering how to identify a demolition project that is stupid and does nothing other than waste money and destroy history consider this bridge. So-called demolition "experts" attempted to blow this bridge up TWO TIMES with hundreds of explosives and the bridge didn't even collapse. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9MFaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=DFkDAAAAIBAJ&dq=historic%20bridge&pg=1837%2C1327969