Treenails Wanted!

 

November 26, 2003 - The Bondville Fair, located at the foot of Stratton Mountain in Southern Vt., is interested in constructing a Town lattice bridge on the Fairgrounds and needs some help. The bridge will be in keeping with an area which is devoted to "the old" - a sugar house, one room school, etc. We do have plans, but we have no one among our membership (including the writer) who is willing to chop out a ton of wooden pegs. Do you know of any place from which they may be obtained? Any info you can give will be sincerely appreciated.

The Bondville Fair is the oldest continuous fair in Vermont. A good deal of expansion has taken place over the last eight years to make for a better fair for our attendees. Located where we are at the foot of Stratton Mountain many fair-goers are weekenders who come from the New York City - New Jersey - Southern Connecticut area, most of whom can now visit a both a sugar house and a one room school, for the first time in their lives. We have a Pathway of Prominent People and Places in Vermont leading to this "antique" area which has 40 4'x8' signs which tell the story of Vermont from Sam Champlain to the Battle of Bennington, to Chet Arthur to Cal Coolidge to Carleton Fiske.

My wife and I have photographed all of the covered bridges inVermont, including some no longer in existence (Twigg-Smith, first Paper Mill, first Power House in Johnson, etc.) yet we did not propose the bridge. When a member did, I jumped at the chance to include it in our 2003-04 capital outlay budget. It will be at the head of the Pathway. We are proposing a 24' bridge. It will be strictly a walking bridge and will be 8' high. We chose Town lattice as Euclid Farnham assures me that it is the easiest to construct by volunteers with limited skills assisted by professional carpenters. Construction will begin in late April and end in time for the 2004 Fair in August.

There is no water to span at the present time but the Pathway runs along the Winhall River. We are currently debating trenching beneath the bridge area to run water from the river on a re-circulating basis. (One of our members suggested laying a garden hose beneath it "so people could say they walked over water." This suggestion was not accepted!) We know that the new Mill bridge in Tunbridge was drawn into place by oxen and a capstan. It would be great if we could duplicate. We'll have to wait to see.

I will be very happy to send you photos of progress of construction when it begins as well as scenes from the completed project. Thanks again for your help.

Sincerely,
Bob Vail

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