How the Covered Bridge was Built

Amzi Russell, a local ideas builder who lived at what is now the Russell-Colbath homestead, was an industrious and versatile nearby builder whose crew of three to thirty local hands were not engineers but extremely skilled craftsmen who worked from a sketch and built as they went. With only hand tools, they shaped, finished, and joined the great logs used for the bridge. A broad axe and adze turned rough-hewn logs into smooth, squared timbers, and an auger bored holes in planks so that long hardwood spikes called treenails were driven in to secure the beams to each other. Granite quarrying was also done with hand tools, while the surrounding forest supplied the trees needed to build the bridge and granite for the abutments was found nearby.

Albany, New Hampshire · United States