Blueprint for a Covered Bridge Rescue

By rallying the community, they restored a treasured landmark for pennies on the dollar.

Up in the heart of New York’s Catskill Mountains, Robert Vredenburgh’s great-grandfather Edgar Marks won the contract to build a bridge across Millbrook Stream with a bid of $950.
He hired his son Edgar, Myron Hall and Wesley Alton (Bob Vredenburgh’s other great-grandfather) to help. They started work in June 1902 and finished on December 8, exactly $77.97 over budget.

Grant Mills Bridge served the Town of Hardenburgh until the mid-1960s, when the Tuscarora Club gave the town an adjoining strip of land for a new bridge. In the deed, the club stipulated that the old covered bridge had to be preserved as an historic monument.

Despite everyone’s good intentions, public funds for preservation were scarce to nonexistent. The old bridge sat sagging and neglected for another 25 years. Finally, the town decided to dismantle it, store it and put it back up somewhere else—someday.

That’s where Bob entered the picture. “We were at a family reunion, and the town supervisor was telling us about the plan to dismantle the bridge and reassemble it later,” he recalls. “I figured that once they tore down the bridge, it would probably never get rebuilt. So, I asked if they’d consider letting me restore it with volunteer labor and donations.

“I had no idea what I was getting into, except that anything is possible,” he adds. A retired investigator for the New York State Police, Bob admits, “I didn’t know a thing about restoring covered bridges. I bought a book by Milton Graton, the world’s premier bridge restorer, and started reading.”

Squared Up for Winter
Meanwhile, volunteers Millie Buerge, Town Councilman Jim Brust and the rest of the fund-raising committee got to work. A $2,000 donation by the Tuscarora Club and $1,000 from the Ulster County highway fund got them started.

The New York State Covered Bridge Society also pitched in. And Boyceville Lumber Company donated 900 board feet of lumber for the roof.

But they raised most of the money a few dollars at a time. The committee held a benefit dance in a donated hall with donated music. They sold oak pegs (which cost $4 each) with the donors’ names engraved on them. More donations trickled in as work progressed.

“Even with volunteer labor, coming up with enough money to keep going was a challenge,” Bob says.
Construction began in earnest after the state approved the group’s preservation plan in October 1990. At that point, the bridge wasn’t even safe to walk on.

“It was racked sideways 22 inches off plumb, and also bowed in the middle,” Bob remembers. “The old bridge probably wouldn’t have made it through another winter.”

So, Bob started getting very familiar with the 180-mile round-trip from his home to the bridge.

Working alone, he attached cables to nearby trees and built cribbing under the bridge. Over the course of 9 days that fall, he slowly pulled the structure back into plumb and jacked up the sagging floor.

Square and level for the first time in decades, Grants Mills Bridge survived the winter.

Come to the Siding Bee!
In the next year and a half, various volunteers, often including Bob’s son Joe, pitched in a total of 149 man-days of labor. Ray Beardsley cranked up his venerable Greene Village sawmill and patiently, precisely cut hemlock to various uncommon dimensions to replace the rotted beams.

Grant Mills is a lattice-style bridge, a design that was popular in that area “mainly because it was easier to build than some other styles,” Bob explains. The unusual buttresses along the sides help stabilize the structure from racking sideways.

“After the trusses were repaired, we had a siding bee and picnic,” Bob says. “More than 50 people showed up to help us finish off the bridge. It was one of the real highlights of the project, and everyone had a great time.”

A dedicated history buff, Bob says he always got a kick out of reading his great-grandfather’s bridge construction diary. So, he kept a similar diary during the restoration.

Highlights include:
• New lumber used in restoration—9,400 board feet
• Days Bob worked—66, including 17 days alone
• Total mileage he drove—11,880
• Number of times someone fell in the creek—1
• Number of trips to Millie’s for tea, toast and cookies—16
• Total cost—$13,000, including 200 new oak pins at $4 each

“If we had hired someone like Milton Graton to restore that bridge, it might’ve cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I think we did pretty well,” Bob adds with a flourish of Yankee understatement.

“It just wouldn’t have gotten done if the community had not pitched in the way they did.”

That’s not just a blueprint for rescuing a covered bridge. It’s a blueprint for life in the country.