Group seeks to designate Battenville Bridge as historic landmark
JACKSON — Residents around the one-lane Battenville Bridge are seeking to designate the span as a historic landmark as a means to stop a Washington County plan that aims to replace it.
Friends of the Battenville Bridge say the 1916 metal truss expanse on County Route 61 that passes over the Battenkill River is an essential feature of the historic hamlet of Battenville because it is a link between the historically significant homes and sites — including Susan B. Anthony’s childhood home.
“It’s a local landmark,” said Lee Shapiro, a member of a Friends group. “How often do you go over a bridge and remember the experience? The county is concerned about the height, the weight limit and the one lane, but they are not thinking of the experience. The bridge compels itself and forces it into your consciousness.”
Friends member Lewis Steele also said there are other reasons for its preservation: mainly “it works” and the one-lane “forms a traffic-calming function.”
“You stop in front of it and look,” Steele said. “In a time when people are going 30 million miles per hour, it’s a way to slow down, a way to say hello to someone, to wave. It’s a way to acknowledge other folks.”
While Jackson Supervisor Jay Skellie said he loves the bridge too, there are practical considerations, particularly that the span is growing unsafe as the posted 20-ton weight limit sign does not always dissuade heavier vehicles.
“I don’t want to see the bridge destroyed,” Skellie said. “The one-lane is not an issue. The weight limit is becoming an issue. Most of the fire trucks come in heavier than 20 tons. Snowplows are heavier. Oil trucks. Some of the larger trucks see the weight-limit sign, but they are not going to back up onto Route 29. They just keep on going. One of these days, someone is going to land in the river.”
Skellie also said salt on tires has corroded some of the supporting joints and that repairs, last done around 2000, are necessary. He also said the bridge is
a problem for farmers who own property on both sides of the river. They have to take an 8mile detour with their farm equipment several times a day to access their fields.
Still, Skellie added that the county, as far as he knows, has yet to send an engineer to look at the bridge, something it said in 2022 it would do.
County Public Works Superintendent Deborah Donohue said the bridge must be replaced because it does not meet standard design considerations. She said a two-lane bridge is necessary as is one that meets height and weight restrictions, that are currently nonstandard.
“We are very early on in the planning process,” Donohue wrote in an email. “The project is going through the design phase where we consider the alternatives and the cost and effect of each alternative. For example there is a cost and effect to leaving
the structure as is, as well as a cost and effect to rehabilitating and the same with replacement.”
Meanwhile, the Friends said they will fight to preserve the bridge. Among their members is Veronique de la Bruyere, owner of the historic John Mclean home that overlooks the bridge. She said her family, many of whose members live in France, has owned the property for 60 years. Any attempt to destroy the bridge, she
said, would prompt “an outpouring of international mail.”
Steele fears that if the bridge were to be replaced, it would lure more truck traffic onto County Route 61, a treacherous road that rises steeply over a small mountain. He also said many Amish live on the road and their horse-drawn buggies would also be at risk if traffic increased. Furthermore, he envisions the unused railroad tracks, that cross the road near the bridge, will one day be a rail trail and that slower moving traffic there would be ideal.
Steele said he did speak with the state Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration about the bridge. State DOT on Wednesday would only say it’s a county project. Steele is relying on the Highway Administration’s Section 106 process that designates roadways for historic preservation. Steele is working toward that end.
He also has a determination from state Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, which noted the bridge “embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period or method of construction” and that “bridges of this type are increasingly rare.” The parks document also indicated “the bridge is eligible for the National Register as a surviving example of the Pratt Thru-truss bridge design” and it “retains integrity of location, setting, design, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association.”
While history does not guarantee preservation, Shapiro said the group is motivated.
“It’s not just the bridge,” Shapiro said. “Battenville has been a neglected gem with a lot of historic structures. With the Susan B. Anthony house opening, the hamlet will see a lot more tourists in the near future.”
As such, he said, the bridge will be needed to carry tourists across the river, for example to visit the cemetery where Anthony’s family is buried or see the one-room school house she attended as a child.
Shapiro predicts out-oftown visitors will fall in love with the bridge too.
“At first encounter, it’s a pain,” he said. “But it kind of endears itself. The one lane is a minor frustration for what is now a unique experience.”