In New Hampshire: a Rare Span

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"Fixing this bridge won't be easy," Milton Graton says, shaking his head as he surveys the long wood-covered passageway across the Connecticut River. "It's a complicated job. If it's done right, the bridge will be around a long time. But if it isn't, it could just fall in the river."

Graton is standing on the heavy planks that form the floor of the longest remaining covered bridge in the U.S., planks that shake a bit as cars and pickup trucks rumble past. The 120-year-old bridge, considered one of the country's historical treasures, links Cornish, N.H., with Windsor, Vt., leaping the brown, swirling waters of the Connecticut River in two giant spans joined by a pier in the center of the stream. There is bright sunshine outside, and the fall foliage is brilliant with color, but inside the bridge there is only dim light from the small windows spaced along the sides. Some motorists turn on their lights.

A recent engineering report says the bridge is "functioning with marginal, decayed components" and that "rehabilitation must be undertaken." Even an untutored eye can see the sag of the long wooden trusses that hold the roadway high above the water. Graton's eye is hardly untutored, though; he is the foremost expert in the world on the construction and restoration of covered bridges. With his son Arnold, he has built or repaired some three dozen of them.

Lean and slightly bent from years of work with hammer and saw, pick and shovel, Graton has sinewy, brown forearms and a powerful grip belying his 77 years.

The 466-ft. bridge, built in 1866, is the fourth on the same site; the others were carried away by flood waters or smashed by ice floes. It is a long, gray shedlike structure, faintly medieval in appearance. The siding boards on the upstream side give evidence of the last heavy attack by ice, in 1977; the lower ends of the boards, which were broken off, have been replaced, and are lighter in color. The sky shows through the dozens of small holes in the roof.

Since 1980 there has been intermittent discussion, and argument, over restoration of the bridge. Everyone agrees it should be repaired and strengthened -- 2,500 vehicles are driven across it every day -- but there are strong differences of opinion over the extent to which authenticity should be preserved and whether the work should be done by Graton or the New Hampshire ! Department of Transportation. Things heated up in 1984, when a rehabilitation plan devised by Graton, using wood almost exclusively for the necessary repairs, was distributed. Public hearings on the Vermont and New Hampshire sides of the river brought out crowds of concerned citizens, many of whom favored Graton's plan.

Graton, however, does not adhere to traditional techniques in matters of bridge building alone. He also prefers old-fashioned ways of doing business, and has always tried to avoid lengthy contracts, performance bonds, "pre- qualification registration," and other such modern advances. On one job, when Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials demanded that a safety net be suspended below the span on which Graton and his crew were working, Graton complied, in his fashion: he balled up a net and tied it in a bundle under the bridge.