On November 1st the Rockingham Select Board officially agreed that the Bartonsville Covered bridge will be rebuilt as a covered bridge. The consulting engineer hired to make the estimates noted that if all goes well we could have a new covered bridge in place by the Fall of 2012.

The town select board made the motion that passed unanimously to have the engineer they had hired to do the assessment to go ahead and develop the bid package and specifications that will be sent out to covered bridge contractors to bid on the construction of our new bridge. We still have a ways to go to determine the final design of the bridge but the consensus was to reconstruct as close to possible the size of the old bridge, another single lane bridge but with some modifications,to make it stronger. The Engineering firm, that has experience with covered bridges, will work with the engineering firm who is designing the abutments to ensure that the two plans match up.

The decision was easily made as the cost of building a concrete bridge was very similar to that of a covered bridge and a covered bridge has a much longer life span than a concrete bridge.

We have the first hurdle out of the way and can now move forward with getting our bridge back, in a perfect world we can shoot for our celebratory party for the first crossing of the new bridge on August 28, 2012,  on the one year anniversary.

We are still not certain what the total cost will be for the abutments and construction of the new bridge but should have that information in the next few weeks.