Skip to main content

Sawmill Creek Covered Bridge - New Brunswick

Image
By

 


Given its location alongside NB Route 114 between Moncton, Hopewell Rocks, and Fundy National Park, the Sawmill Creek Covered Bridge is one of the more recognizable covered bridges in Albert County, New Brunswick, and possibly the entire province. Located on the Sawmill Creek near Hopewell Hill, the Sawmill Creek Covered Bridge is built in a Howe truss design which is common for many covered bridges found throughout New Brunswick. The covered bridge is 105 feet (33 meters) long and sits in a roadside park, serving only pedestrian, bicycle, and horse traffic.

In my research, I've found two competing dates of the Sawmill Creek Covered Bridge, 1905 and 1908. But the bridge's history precedes either of those years. On October 4, 1869, the Saxby Gale was a powerful storm where the combined forces of wind and high tides destroyed homes and killed people and livestock along the Bay of Fundy in both New Brunswick and neighboring Nova Scotia. As a result of the Saxby Gale, the old bridge over Sawmill Creek fell apart.

The bridge was rebuilt as a covered bridge and was for years part of the highway now known as NB 114. Historical records point towards the current Sawmill Creek Covered Bridge to have been built in 1908 by A.E. Smye of Alma, New Brunswick. The contract for the bridge's construction was signed on September 25, 1907 for a sum of over $3,000 and construction went underway at once. The bridge was built quickly, as the flooring for the bridge was completed on New Year's Day 1908 and the bridge opened up for traffic. However, the roof of the covered bridge was not completed until the spring of 1908.

When a concrete bridge was planned to replace the covered bridge in 1975 to accommodate increased traffic and weight loads, Albert County Heritage Trust persuaded the government not to demolish the covered bridge. Instead, the bridge was saved and moved slightly downstream, allowing both the new parallel bridge and the covered bridge to peacefully coexist. Today, the bridge serves as a reminder of the history of Albert County. The Sawmill Creek Covered Bridge is part of the Trans-Canada Trail as well, allowing people to enjoy recreational activities across Canada. My visit to the bridge was in early May 2022, soon after repairs were made to the bridge in 2021.

Close to the covered bridge, there is a guest ranch that offers trail rides across the bridge, so this sign on the east side of the bridge is appropriate in modern times and as a nod to history.

Plaque indicating the 1905 date for the Sawmill Creek Covered Bridge.

A look into the bridge portal. The NB Route 114 bridge over Sawmill Creek is just to the west.

Sawmill Creek.


How to Get There:



Sources and Links:
Tourism New Brunswick - Sawmill Creek No. 0.5 Covered Bridge
Historical Marker Database - Sawmill Creek Bridge/Le Pont Sawmill Creek
Connecting Albert County - Major Repairs to Sawmill Creek Covered Bridge
GalenFrysinger.com - Sawmill Creek Covered Bridge
New Brunswick's Covered Bridges - Sawmill Creek No. 5
DaleJTravis.com - New Brunswick Covered Bridges List
Labels:
Location: 5431 Main St, Hopewell Hill, NB E4H 3M9, Canada

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third
Post a Comment
Read more