Skip to main content

Hyde Hall Covered Bridge

Visitors to Glimmerglass State Park might not notice the Hyde Hall Covered Bridge right away if they are going to the main parking area to enjoy the beach or to have a picnic lunch on the northern shores of Otsego Lake, but if they do able to catch a glimpse of the bridge, they may soon realize that they are looking at New York State's oldest covered bridge in their midst. Just a short walk from a small parking area set off the main road of the park, the Hyde Hall Covered Bridge was originally built in 1825 as part of the road to historic Hyde Hall and spans 53 feet over Shadow Brook.

Built by Cyrenus Clark, Andrew Alden and Lorenzo Bates in 1825, this single span covered bridge incorporates the Burr arch design by famed covered bridge architect Theodore Burr. The bridge was restored in 1967 by New York State and was placed on federal and state national historic registries in 1998. The covered bridge is popular with photographers, walkers, hikers and snowshoeing as it is on or near a few foot trails that traverse the Glimmerglass State Park.

Sources and Links:
New York State Covered Bridges - Hyde Hall Covered Bridge
Hyde Hall - The Oldest Covered Bridge in New York State
This is Cooperstown - Hyde Hall Covered Bridge
New York State Parks - Glimmerglass State Park

How to Get There:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Oldest bridge in the US, not just NYState

Popular posts from this blog

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

  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

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

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

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  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