History
The town of Northfield first authorized a bridge at or near the site of the current bridge in 1810. The bridge was built by a private corporation with the town holding stock. The new bridge was destroyed in a flood after only a few years. A horse boat ferry, known as Bennett's Meadow Ferry, replaced the river crossing. In 1897, the state legislature authorized Franklin County to construct a second bridge at or near the site of the ferry at a cost not to exceed $35,000. The new bridge was designed by Edward Shaw of Boston and was opened to traffic in 1899. The bridge was one of the first bridges erected by a then novel method without the use of false works that has since become standard procedure. The 1899 bridge was later demolished and a third bridge (the current bridge) was constructed just south of the former bridge, resulting also in the slight realignment of the highway.
Read more about this topic: Bennett's Meadow Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)