The Simpsonville Stone Arch Bridge carries Vermont Route 35 across Simpson Brook in the hamlet of Simpsonville about 2 miles north of Townshend Village. Local farmer James Otis Follett built the bridge circa 1909, apparently as the next-to-last bridge he constructed, and among his Townshend bridges it is considered the best preserved and possibly the finest in craftsmanship. The bridge is a single span supported by a stone segmental arch with a 20-foot base, a 6-foot rise above the brook, and an 18-foot stone-arch width. In 1959 it was widened with two steel culvert wings, each 8.5 feet wide, creating an overall width of 35 feet to accommodate two full travel lanes, and the original stone sidewalls were likely removed at that time. Only the soffit of Follett’s original arch remains visible, while rubble stone facing conceals the spandrels and abutments above the culverts. Unlike Follett’s other Townshend bridges of fieldstone, this bridge was built of large rectangular granite blocks, probably brought from the Dummerston granite quarry by train and then by oxen, and fitted into regular courses. The bridge remains in excellent condition, carries state highway traffic without reinforcement, and represents a highly unusual rural Vermont road bridge because it was built after iron, steel, and concrete had largely replaced wood and stone. It is also part of what may be the largest related group of Follett stone bridges still standing. Follett, born in 1843 and dead in 1911, was a Townshend farmer who became a stonemason, road commissioner, church deacon, and Civil War veteran at Gettysburg; though he had no formal engineering or masonry education, he built his first Townshend stone arch bridge in 1894 and about twelve more there before his death, and his surviving bridges were known for durability, with none known to have failed structurally.

Photo: Steve Stoessel

Photo: Steve Stoessel

Townshend, Vermont · USA