The Newfield Covered Bridge, built between 1851 and 1853, became Newfield's most prized icon and the surviving remnant of a once larger group of covered bridges in Tompkins County. Stone masons Benjamin Starr and Dick Russell laid its abutments, and carpenters Samuel Hamm, his sons David and Sylvester, David Dassance, and Patchen Parsons built the bridge. It cost $800, measured 115 feet long and 16 feet wide, and used the Town Lattice Truss design patented in 1820 and 1835 by architect Ithiel Town of New Haven, Connecticut, a method using planks fastened with wooden pins in a lattice of crisscross diagonals that allowed lighter timbers to provide reliable strength at lower cost. In 1969, when Tompkins County considered replacing the deteriorated bridge with steel and concrete, the New York State Covered Bridge Society joined Grant and Marie Musser in persuading authorities to preserve it, leading to a 1972 restoration by Milton S. Graton and his two sons of Ashland, New Hampshire. That work raised the portal entrance two feet for vehicle clearance, raised the entire bridge one foot, added two side arches for support, and cost $42,000. Another restoration planned for 1998 included abutment and bank stabilization, new decking and roofing, timber guide rail extensions, paint, a parking lot upgrade, a pedestrian bridge, landscaping, and an overlook and picnic area, at a cost exceeding $280,000. After these preservation efforts, Trish and Bob Kane of Sherburne, NY, together with the New York State Covered Bridge Society, submitted a historic preservation application, and on February 25, 2000, the Newfield Covered Bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the lone survivor of three covered bridges once found in Tompkins County, one of 24 authentic covered bridges remaining from the 250 New York State once had, and the oldest covered bridge still open to daily vehicular traffic. Its roof reflected the practical economy of protecting bridge flooring from the elements, and Samuel Hamm once hoped to have an interior mural painted after the covered bridges of Luzern, Switzerland, but the artist died and the Civil War ended that plan. The exact construction date is uncertain because a fire in June 1875 destroyed all town records except the 1811 town minutes, and several descendants of the original builders still live in Newfield.