Worral - 1868
The 1868 Worrall Covered Bridge, also known as the Woralls Bridge is a wooden covered bridge carrying Williams Road across the Williams River in Rockingham, Windham County, Vermont. It is the only surviving 19th-century covered bridge in the town after the Hall Covered Bridge collapsed in 1980 and was replaced in 1982.
Williams Road is a dirt road that generally parallels the Williams River on its north side. The bridge is a Town lattice truss structure, with a total span of 82 feet and a total structure length of 87 feet. The trusses rest on stone abutments that have been reinforced with concrete, and the roadbed is 14 feet wide, or one lane, and has been reinforced with laminated beams. A load limit of 8 tons is posted. It is topped by a gabled metal roof and is sheathed in vertical board siding, with openings on its south side to improve traffic visibility. The bridge includes one rare feature — a wooden ramp leading up to the northwest entrance.
Two laminated stringers have been recently added to the underside of the floor parallel to the trusses for reinforcement. Each laminated stringer consists of short timbers tie-bolted together. Cable sway braces have been strung diagonally under the floor to provide additional lateral support. A 19-foot span of steel beams carries the road across a floodway to the north end of the covered bridge, which rests on the original abutment of stonework now faced with concrete. To lessen the danger of washout, the bank behind that abutment has been partly excavated, leaving it nearly free-standing. The southern end of the bridge rests on the original abutment of stone slabs without mortar.
The bridge was built about 1868 by Sanford Granger, a local master builder. Of seventeen 19th-century bridges once located in the town, it is one of only two that remain. At the time of its National Register listing in 1973, there were three such bridges, but one of them, the nearby Bartonsville Covered Bridge, was destroyed in 2011 by flooding caused by Hurricane Irene.
Of the over 500 covered bridges that were built in the state of Vermont, as of 2019, only 104 remain.
Length of largest span: 73.2 ft.
Total length: 106 ft.
Deck width: 14.1 ft.
Vertical clearance above deck: 8.4 ft.
Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on July 16, 1973.
Located at: N43 12.707 W72 32.132 - WGCB #45-13-10
Photographed in July 2019.