The Pequabuck Bridge is a historic stone arch bridge, carrying a paved multiuse trail across the

Pequabuck River The Pequabuck River is a river, approximately 19 miles (30.6 km) in length, which rises in Litchfield County, Connecticut, and courses through neighboring Hartford County before emptying into the Farmington River in Farmington. The river has ...

Farmington, Connecticut Farmington is a town in Hartford County in the Farmington Valley area of central Connecticut in the United States. The population was 26,712 at the 2020 census. It sits 10 miles west of Hartford at the hub of major I-84 interchanges, 20 miles ...

. Built in 1833, the bridge formerly carried the adjacent Meadow Road. It is one of the state's only surviving early 19th-century stone arch bridges and was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1984.

Description and history

The Pequabuck Bridge is located in central southern Farmington, and is set just north of the modern Meadow Road crossing of the Pequabuck River, a tributary of the

Farmington River The Farmington River is a river, U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 in length along its main stem, located in northwest Connecticut with major tributaries ex ...

. It now crosses over an occasionally wet channel that the river formerly occupied; the river was rerouted to the east with the construction of the modern road bridge. This bridge has a single stone arch, with a span of and a height of . It is built mainly out of brownstone rubble, which is the major element of its abutments, spandrels, wing walls, and parapets. The arch itself is shaped out of finished brownstone

voussoir A voussoir () is a wedge-shaped element, typically a stone, which is used in building an arch or vault. Although each unit in an arch or vault is a voussoir, two units are of distinct functional importance: the keystone and the springer. The ...

s. The bridge is about wide, and its arch is topped by earth fill and a paved surface that now carries pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The bridge was built in 1832-33, and originally carried the traffic of Meadow Road. It is unusual within the state at that time for a town to construct a stone bridge, given the expense; this one was funded in part by the operators of the

Farmington Canal The Farmington Canal, also known as the New Haven and Northampton Canal, was a major private canal built in the early 19th century to provide water transportation from New Haven into the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and beyond. Its Mass ...

. It replaced an 1819 wooden bridge, which was laboring under heavy usage. The town specified that an embankment connect this bridge to that on which the road crossed the canal, and that it be built at the same height as the canal bridge. The canal bridge has not survived, and only traces of the embankment now survive. The bridge remained in service as a road bridge until the second half of the 20th century. and

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut National Register of Historic Places in Hartford County, Connecticut Bridges completed in 1832 Bridges in Hartford County, Connecticut Farmington, Connecticut

Description and history

See also

References