Essex County to consider historic bridges

KEESEVILLE | The first of innumerable bridges to be built across the AuSable Chasm at Keeseville was the aptly named High Bridge, which in 1793 employed six enormous logs of Norway Pine knitted together with heavy planks a hundred feet above the river. In the days before pressure-treated lumber, it did well to last 20 years. The last man to cross the bridge was a person named Max Morgan who on a classic dark and foggy night out of which such legends are so often born, fell asleep on his horse, which took the "old" way home across the failing High Bridge. Not noticing or not caring that only one of the six logs remained, Max's steed deftly tightroped the last remaining log, aided, it was said, by the angels — called to the scene by the prayers of a frantic Morgan, who had awakened half way across. Today, unless the angels worked for the highway department, Max would have had a harder time crossing two of Keeseville's historic bridges, which have been closed for a lack of maintenance and are in danger of being lost. An 1888 suspension pedestrian bridge, meanwhile, is sorely in need of attention as well, and residents fear it may be next to close. To save the bridges, a community effort is evolving to protect a river-crossing tradition that in many ways defines the village of Keeseville and represents a significant era in rural-American bridge building. Steve Engelhart, director of the Adirondack Architectural Heritage organization, has said that there are maybe 30 truly historic bridges in the Adirondacks, and half of them span the Ausable. Keeseville's bridges are today on the Historic Register, largely due to Engelhart's work. Now, other community members are adding their voices. "These are pieces of our heritage that we don't want to lose," Matt Pray told Essex County supervisors this month, as he delivered nearly 800 signatures on a petition to the board. Anywhere you go in town all we see is "Bridge Closed" signs. What kind of image does this leave on our community?" Of top priority is the Upper Bridge — known in the vernacular as double-span metal Pratt truss bridge — built in the same decade as the Brooklyn Bridge. It was ordered from a catalog and fabricated by a company that primarily made railroad cars, and remaining examples of its bridge work are quite rare. Along with its history, Pray said the bridge is an important transportation link, taking pressure off a busy, bridge downtown, and as a critical route for emergency vehicles if the lower (and historically celebrated) Arch Bridge is compromised, as happened during Hurricane Irene. A second bridge that's been closed is the Chasm Bridge below the thundering falls that have been the backdrop for innumerable vacation photos. "Tourists are always asking how to get to the bridge, and I have to tell them that it's closed," he said. That bridge too would be an attractive link between travelers exiting the Northway and a community of local agricultural producers along Mace Chasm Road. The iron span was the power company's answer to wooden bridges that kept rotting from the spray of the falls. Because Keeseville grew up on opposite banks of the Ausable River, bridges became its lifelines. But that same quirk of geography led to governance provided by four different jurisdictions, two towns and two counties. Now, the main reason the village needed multiple bridges is the same reason it's having trouble fixing them up. As many as four local governments have jurisdiction over the river crossings, meaning that multiple agencies have to be convinced of the worthiness of saving the bridges. Essex County Public Works Director Jim Dougan said he appreciates the aesthetics and history of the bridges, but that there are some tough realities overcome, be they political, financial or structural. An obvious problem is funding, particularly as tax revenues have fallen sharply due to the recent economic shutdown. And Dougan said past studies of the bridges have shown they would be difficult to shore up. "We looked at the existing trusses on the Upper Bridge, and even with modification they could not be strengthened enough to carry an ambulance," he said. Still, Dougan and the county will take another look, in light of community interest, and report back. The cluster of bridges, all within a half mile of each other, and built around the same time, are fascinating to civil engineers because they all used different materials and different techniques to suit individual needs. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, "In an era known for 'monumental' structures such as the Brooklyn Bridge, the bridges of Keeseville symbolize a different — though equally important — facet of 19th-century bridge-building practice." Through the middle of the 1800s, rural America was transitioning from fords and ferries to bridges, all of which tended to have a story to tell. Each historic bridge is also a reminder of the bridges that came before, now gone, and their stories. One of the more tragic was the predecessor to the Walking Bridge, where the foot-stomping cadence of a militia unit caused it to fail. Forty people on the bridge plunged into the river below, and 13 did not survive.

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Essex County to consider historic bridges

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