The Bailey Island Bridge

On reading Amanda Severn's hub showing bridges in art and photos, I decided to post a hub on this bridge from my childhood.

After an afternoon of haying on our farm, which was about a half hour inland from the islands, we loved to get in the car and go for a swim off the Orr's Island ledges. Sometimes we would go over the Bailey Island Bridge and all the way to Land's End where we looked for pretty stones along a little rocky beach. The trip to Land's End was exciting.

I remember hearing that the Bailey Island Bridge was designed in the architectural style of bridges in Scotland--and that there was none other like it in the US. Don't know whether that's true, but it's always nice to feel that your area is special.

A Wikipedia entry explains: Design of the 1,150-foot bridge was complicated by the tides in the area known as Will’s Gut. It was decided to build a cribstone bridge using granite slabs from local quarries. Granite slabs were considered sufficiently heavy to withstand wind and wave, while the open cribbing allowed the tide to ebb and flow freely without increasing tidal current to any great degree. Some 10,000 tons of granite were used in the project.

The entry further says that a sidewalk was added in 1951—which would have been after my first trips across the bridge. The 1961 guard rails were added after I grew up.

The bridge is a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Bailey Island Bridge is reported to be the only granite cribstone bridge in the world. I wonder if I made up that story about similar Scottish bridges.