The 1840 Sayres Covered Bridge, also called the Sayers Covered Bridge and the Thetford Center Covered Bridge, is a historic covered bridge, carrying Tucker Hill Road across the Ompompanoosuc River in Thetford, Orange County, Vermont. It is the state's only known example of the Haupt patent truss system.

The Sayres Covered Bridge is located a short way west of the village of Thetford Center, spanning the south-flowing Ompompanoosuc River, a tributary of the Connecticut River. The bridge has a span of 128.5 feet and rests on dry-laid stone abutments that have been capped in concrete and a central concrete pier. The bridge is covered by a metal roof and sheathed in vertical board siding. The portal ends project beyond the deck by about 1 foot. The deck is now supported by steel I-beams, and the original bridge trusses support only the bridge superstructure. The bridge has a total width of 20.5 feet, with an 18-foot wide roadway (one lane).

The bridge's construction date is circa 1840 and it is the only example of the Haupt patent truss known in the state, and maybe the only example in the northeastern United States. The alterations made to support the deck with I-beams, including capping the abutments and adding the central pier, were made in 1963.

The bridge is thought by some to be a Haupt Truss span, mostly because some of the diagonals cross more than one truss panel. Covered bridge builder and restorer Jan Lewandoski holds that there is no evidence that the builders knew they were constructing a Haupt Truss. Whatever truss it is, it is the only one of its kind in New England. While the names of the builders of the Sayers are lost, the Haupt Truss designer is remembered by Civil War buffs as the Colonel who built and ran the U.S. Military Railroad in the South for Union forces.

The "Haupt" design as implemented here, resembles a multiple kingpost truss. It differs in that it is assembled from planks instead of square timbers and is joined with treenails rather than with mortise and tenon. The builder integrated the whole with a segmented plank arch.

Thetford Town was chartered in 1761 and settled by people from both New Hampshire and Connecticut. In the 1860s, historian Isaac Hasford remarked that while the Connecticut River town was favored and above average in thrift and population, nothing had happened there to claim space in history. "We have, besides farming, a riotous mill stream, the Oompompanusuc, bisecting the town, giving life and power to three smart villages . . . . It has, on occasion, [washed] half their bridges and sometimes their mills down to the Connecticut River and the town below."

Along the course of the "mill stream," were eight sawmills, four grist mills, a strawboard, and paper mill, two flannel factories, a carriage shop, and bedstead factory, and an edge tool and trip-hammer works. Two covered bridges survive and continue to span the Oompompanusuc. The Sayers Bridge is one of them. The Union Village Bridge is the other.

The 127-foot Sayers bridge was strengthened in 1963. The existing roadway was replaced with a nail-laminated timber deck on four steel beams supported in mid-span by a concrete pier. Sayres Bridge crosses the Ompompanoosuc River above a millpond and the river flows over a ruined dam and cascades down terraces of bedrock.

Total length: 127 ft.;  Vertical clearance above deck: 10.6 ft.

Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on September 17, 1974.

Located at:  N43 49.923    W72 15.165     -     WGCB #45-09-06

Photographed in June of 202