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Fuller Bridge - 1890

Montgomery's Fuller Bridge: Photo by
Joe Nelson, November, 1996          The Fuller, or Black Falls Bridge, stands in the heart of Montgomery Village and is very much part of village life. In season, it can be found decorated with Christmas wreaths and lights.
         The Fuller Bridge crosses Black Falls Brook in sight of Route 118. The Black Falls Brook powered the J.E. Smith bobbin factory, and the Jewetts built the fifty-foot span in 1890 to replace an open bridge that had collapsed under the weight of a load of bobbins from the mill. The company built a mill town at the end of the present day Black Falls Road, complete with a fifty-room dormitory and twenty-six mill houses, but no trace of it remains.
         The bridge was restored in 1981, but it needed attention again soon thereafter. In early winter 1982, Montgomery's road crew knew there was a problem when a log truck passed the town garage with Christmas lights and pieces of roof rafter clinging to the log boom and dragging behind. There were pieces of roof scattered for a half mile, the road foreman said. "We had just put the lights up for the season." The trucker was obviously feeling very little pain when he drove through the bridge--he scarcely noticed when his boom hooked into the sway braces and dragged the roof off. The bridge served through the winter with the sides braced up with cables and was repaired the next year.

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Joe Nelson, P.O Box 267, Jericho, VT 05465-0267, jcnelson@together.net

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Photographs Copyright © 2000, Richard Wilson
This file updated July 15, 2000