Old Blenheim Bridge was a wooden

covered bridge A covered bridge is a timber-truss bridge with a roof, decking, and siding, which in most covered bridges create an almost complete enclosure. The purpose of the covering is to protect the wooden structural members from the weather. Uncovered woo ...

that spanned Schoharie Creek in

North Blenheim, New York North Blenheim is a hamlet (and census-designated place) in the town of Blenheim, Schoharie County, New York, United States. It had the longest wooden, single-span covered bridge in the United States, the Old Blenheim Bridge Old Blenheim Bridge ...

, United States. With an open span of , it had the second longest span of any surviving single-span

in the world. The 1862

Bridgeport Covered Bridge The Bridgeport Covered Bridge is located in Bridgeport, Nevada County, California, southwest of French Corral and north of Lake Wildwood. It is used as a pedestrian crossing over the South Yuba River. The bridge was built in 1862 by David Joh ...

in Nevada County, California, currently undergoing repairs due to 1986 flooding (rebuild started in 2019) is longer overall at but is argued to have a clear span. The bridge, opened in 1855, was also one of the oldest of its type in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It was destroyed by flooding resulting from

Tropical Storm Irene The name Irene was used for thirteen cyclones worldwide: 12 tropical and one extratropical. Of the tropical cyclones named Irene, seven were in the Atlantic, two were in the South Pacific, and the Western Pacific, South-West Indian Ocean and Austral ...

in 2011. Rebuilding of the bridge commenced in 2017 and was completed in 2018.

History

Nicholas Montgomery Powers was brought in from

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

to build the bridge by a group of local businessmen who formed the Blenheim Bridge Company for the purpose of constructing this bridge. The bridge opened in 1855, and remained in use for vehicles until 1932, when a steel truss bridge was constructed nearby. Since then, the bridge was maintained as a historic site open to pedestrians. It was declared a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

in 1964 and designated as a

National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark __NOTOC__ The following is a list of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks as designated by the American Society of Civil Engineers since it began the program in 1964. The designation is granted to projects, structures, and sites in the United State ...

by the

American Society of Civil Engineers American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

in 1983. and On August 28, 2011, record flooding along the Schoharie Creek, due to

, resulted in the bridge being washed away and completely destroyed.

Longest bridge

Many sources simply claimed the Old Blenheim Bridge was the longest surviving single-span covered bridge, without getting into span length vs. total length. There are also sources that claim the

in California is longer. The New York Covered Bridge Society states that Blenheim bridge was longer than "a bridge in California" (presumably Bridgeport), in terms of clear span. Blenheim's clear span was originally , according to this website. A report by the

U.S. Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the mana ...

states that the Bridgeport Covered Bridge ( No. CA-41) has clear spans of on one side and on the other, while Blenheim Bridge ( No. NY-331) had a documented clear span of in the middle (1936 drawings). In August 2003, measurements of post-repair Blenheim Bridge abutments were on the upstream side, and on the downstream side. Historically, the longest single-span covered bridge on record was Pennsylvania's

McCall's Ferry Bridge ''McCall's'' was a monthly American women's magazine, published by the McCall Corporation, that enjoyed great popularity through much of the 20th century, peaking at a readership of 8.4 million in the early 1960s. It was established as a small-fo ...

with a claimed clear span of (built 1814–15, destroyed by ice jam 1817).

Destruction

The bridge was destroyed on August 28, 2011, as a result of flooding from

. A witness saw its roof deposited onto a modern bridge just downstream, when the bridge was swept away at about 1 p.m. Over subsequent months, the Schoharie County Highway Department collected pieces of the bridge up to about downstream. On July 21, 2015, National Historic Landmark designation for the bridge was withdrawn and the property was delisted from the National Register of Historic Places.

Replacement

A replacement for the bridge was built in 2017, exactly reproducing the design of the original. It was built to stand higher to avoid future floods. Plans were for the bridge to "look and feel like it's the old bridge". Plans for replacement of the bridge took much time and effort; funding for reconstruction was at first opposed by FEMA, and the chair of a local committee characterized it as "a battle" to get approval. The construction cost $6.7 million, funded 75 percent by FEMA and 25 percent by New York State; it was started in early 2017. Preserved pieces of the original bridge were included as a memorial. The construction contract was advertised with bids due in October 2016 by the New York State's Governor's Office on Storm Recovery. On October 3, 2018,

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

broadcast an episode of the ''

Nova A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramati ...

'' documentary TV series about the reconstruction.

Gallery

Image:Old Blenheim Bridge Alternate 11Mar2008.jpg, Oblique view as photographed from up the hill on the eastern shore Image:Old Blenheim Bridge 11Mar2008.jpg, The span of the Old Blenheim Bridge as photographed 11 March 2008. Image:BlenheimBridge.jpg , Old Blenheim Bridge NYS Education Dept. Historical Marker (with bridge in background) as photographed 29 May 2009 Image:OldBlenheimBridgeRNHLMarker.jpg, Registered National Historic Landmark Plaque

References

External links