The temperature at midday hovered around 10 degrees, so cold that the Windsor High School band couldn’t play because their lips kept sticking to their instruments. Nonetheless, dignitaries and townspeople were gathered around for the formal reopening of the Cornish-Windsor covered bridge on Dec. 8, 1989, bringing an end to seemingly endless delays and skirmishes over how it was to be repaired or replaced. The drama that began a half-century ago finally moved toward resolution 40 years ago this month.
Everybody agreed something needed to be done about the declining condition of the bridge over the Connecticut River, but what to do was another story.
To highway officials in Concord and Montpelier, the answer seemed obvious: abandon the ancient wooden span and build a new concrete and steel bridge a quarter-mile upstream. It would be a conventional “aircraft carrier”-style open-deck structure. The bridge would originate in the Route 12A cornfields in Cornish and connect to River Street in Windsor, which leads west over the Central Vermont railroad crossing up the hill to Main Street and U.S. Route 5.
But in 1980, a Cornish-Windsor project wasn’t even on the list of Connecticut River bridges deemed needing replacement or repair. Ranked ahead were spans between Hanover and Norwich, Charlestown and Springfield, Vt., Walpole, N.H., and Westminster, Vt., and Hinsdale, N.H., and Brattleboro, Vt.
People who drove through or past Cornish-Windsor could plainly see that the bridge was sagging in both its sections that met at the pier in the middle of the river. Floor planking installed in the 1950s was growing thin, too, but from the outside, it was obvious the bridge was beginning to fail. In 1983 highway officials were pressed at hearings to include repairs in their planning and the upshot was an engineering study that described the problems and projected costs for repairs, with a 1987 target for the work.
That seemed like progress, but in late 1985, advocates for repair learned that the Cornish-Windsor project had been abandoned by highway officials in Concord, who claimed there were no funds available.
A New Hampshire state representative would step forward at the beginning of the 1986 legislative session to try to turn things around and bring the imperiled project back to life. Merle Schotanus, of Grantham, whose district also included Plainfield and Cornish, joined fellow representative Sara Townsend, of Plainfield, in proposing an amendment to a highway bill that would direct $1 million to the Cornish-Windsor project. The discovery of a source of money from a special federal highway program to conserve historic landmarks helped move the amendment through the labyrinthine legislative process.
Schotanus would become the key figure in the drawn-out story of getting rehabilitation to reality. He had a seat on the House Finance Committee, which put him in a place where he could cajole decision makers and twist arms when necessary. Getting an appropriation to fix a covered bridge up in Cornish was a remarkable achievement, considering how the powerful highway department was lobbying against him. But obtaining money in a state budget included convincing the full House of Representatives, the State Senate and then Gov. John H. Sununu to go along, and Schotanus held fast and won.
That was only a step forward, because the rehabilitation project would be plagued by differences between various interests, most notably historic preservation groups. Arguments raged over the introduction of steel plating and laminated beams versus employing materials and methods exactly as the original builders used back in 1866. Should the roof go back to cedar shingles or will metal be historically acceptable? Should the project raise the entire structure three feet higher to reduce the threat of damage from ice jams? Those and similar questions generated impassioned rhetoric for months, and often Schotanus stepped in to mediate.
A particularly tense problem involved the selection of the contractor to carry out the rehabilitation work. Preservation advocates wanted Milton Graton Associates of Ashland, N.H., to handle the project; the company had a distinguished record of building and restoring covered bridges and historic barns. Milton Graton said he always did business on a handshake and would refuse to enter the official state public works bidding process. State officials refused to bend the rules, and eventually a compromise was worked out that called for Graton to consult with the prime contractor, which became a Long Island, N.Y.,-based company.
How to straighten up the two segments of the bridge generated a similar debate. Some envisioned extensive cribbing rising from the river bottom. The contractor ended up erecting temporary steel towers fitted with cables that held the sections like a hammock while work was performed to strengthen and level up the structure.
Schotanus was always in the background tamping down controversy and pulling levers to keep state and federal money flowing to what would become a nearly $5 million project (around $12 million today).
From the start of the rehabilitation project to the celebration of its completion, nearly two and a half years would elapse, a time in which motorists had to drive a 17-mile route via West Claremont and Ascutneyville instead of 449 feet over a wooden bridge to get to Windsor or Cornish. In the 1980s, there was still considerable traffic generated by workers traveling to and from the two major Windsor employers at the time, Goodyear and Cone Automatic. Today, a considerable amount of the bridge traffic comes from motorists from Windsor and points west using the bridge and New Hampshire Route 12A to access shopping and jobs in the Lebanon area, rather than using I-91 to White River Junction and across the river on I-89.
No matter the wicked cold, an estimated 300 people showed up to see the ceremony marking the reopening of the Cornish-Windsor bridge. Govs. Judd Gregg and Madeleine Kunin were there to speak, as was Chuck Douglas, the congressman for Cornish and western New Hampshire. Highway officials from both states had their say. It was a festival of interstate admiration, though it was mentioned several times how New Hampshire bore better than 90% of the cost, since it owns all but a few feet of the bridge structure. Wallace Stickney, New Hampshire commissioner of transportation, was the master of ceremonies; it was he who had ordered the bridge closed to traffic more than two years earlier.
Among local legislators who spoke were Robert Harris from Windsor and Schotanus from the sprawling northwestern Sullivan County House district. Harris had advocated for years for saving the bridge, frequently posting letters to editors of area newspapers updating readers on the downs and ups of his crusade. Merle Schotanus also spoke. His words were brief and he received barely any acknowledgment from other speakers of his dogged efforts on behalf of the project.
But Schotanus, who died in 2020, left a major imprint on civic affairs at both the state and local levels. He was a trustee of the New Hampshire higher education system and is credited with providing the political muscle to get a major athletic complex constructed at Plymouth State University. He was town moderator of Grantham for 20 years, served on numerous charitable boards, was active in conservation circles and was a tireless fundraiser for many organizations, especially the Prouty race for cancer research at Dartmouth Health, he having twice survived cancer episodes.
He came to New Hampshire after a long career as an Army infantry officer and he and his wife bought and developed a maple and fruit farm in Grantham. He likely would have made brigadier general had he not been part of a team of high-ranking officers sent to Vietnam in 1967 to do an assessment of the combat situation on the ground. The report was negative and not welcome to higher-ups and the White House. He and others on the team were shunted to desk jobs and soon took retirement.
Throughout their crusade to rejuvenate the Cornish-Windsor bridge, advocates have pitched it as not only a transportation asset but a tourist attraction and engine of economic activity. Imaginations occasionally tested the limits of hyperbole — the bridge was called the Upper Valley’s “Statue of Liberty” and a “treasure that stands as majestic testimony” to the foresight of politicians, New Hampshire-Vermont cooperation and “the ingenuity of the citizens.”
History of the bridge is indeed rich and colorful. It was built by Bela Jenks Fletcher, of Claremont, and James Tasker, of Cornish, using what’s called the town lattice truss, named for its Connecticut inventor, Ithiel Towne. Legend has it that Tasker first built a model using Towne’s design, placed it between two chairs and then jumped on it. When it didn’t break, building a real bridge was a go. Tasker built four more bridges that are still standing in Cornish and Plainfield today.
In the heyday of the Temperance movement, Windsor was a dry town, Cornish was wet, so pedestrians frequently walked over to the New Hampshire side. As the span was then a toll bridge, it charged $2 for the walk over to the Cornish side and $3 for the return to Windsor. A sign still posted over the entrance to the bridge warns teamsters to walk their horses or pay a $2 fine.
The Cornish-Windsor span was long known as a “kissing bridge.” That means it’s long enough to permit an amorous couple passing through its dark interior time for a smooch or two.
Steve Taylor occasionally contributes to the Valley News. He resides in Meriden.
