Temporary Bridge Open for Traffic A temporary bridge and detour road around the Checkered House Bridge opened on June 22nd. Traffic can now move freely during the remainder of construction, though there may be occasional delays dur-ing construction activities to move equipment or materials. It will take about two years to complete reconstruction of the Checkered House Bridge. During that time the temporary bridge will be open to traffic, including all legally permitted truck traffic.

The 266-foot Mabey bridge is the largest, single-span, temporary bridge structure produced--just large enough to span the approximate 250-foot width of the Winooski River. Contractor Harrison & Burrowes had to build concrete footings at the edge of the river to support the steel piers that were assembled on-site.

A large stone outcropping near the entrance to Johnnie Brook and Kenyon Roads had to be removed, requiring blasting. For about three weeks, charges were lowered into drilled shafts in the rock and set off two times a day, late morning and mid-afternoon. Both Interstate 89 and Route 2 had to be shut down for brief periods during blasting. Some of the blasted rock was used in the roadway embankment. Most will be crushed and re-used at other construction jobs.

CheCkered house Bridgesummer 2011

Please Stay InformedWhether you need up-to-date travel information or are just curious about what’s going on at the Checkered House Bridge, the project team will keep you in-the-know through a variety of channels:

When travel patterns may be af-fected, information is provided to travel advisory networks, in-cluding VT511 Travel Advisory, Chittenden County Metropolitan

see Stay Informed, page 3

>>> see Bridge Opens, page 4

Bridge facts by the NUMBERS 2lanes

17foot portal clearance

21feet wide

#24its official state name

32feet above Winooski River

356feet long (longest single-span bridge in VT)

1929year bridge officially opened

1990listed on the National Register of Historic Places

1991rated structurally deficient

2009temporarily closed for repairs

2011reconstruction begins

Checkered House Bridge Summer 2011

The only bridge left standing: Recalling the flood of 1927

The monTh of ocTober 1927 was a wet one. Twice the normal amount of rain fell, thoroughly saturating the ground. So, in early November, when a 48-hour down-pour dumped eight inches of rain, water rushed into swollen brooks and streams, resulting in one of the state’s worst disasters. Eighty four people died in the flood of 1927. But while there were many close calls and coura-geous rescues, nobody in Richmond lost their life in this 500-year flood.

Richmond’s early 1800’s-era wooden, covered Check-ered House Bridge was the only bridge between Rich-mond and White River Junction that wasn’t washed out by the flood. But its survival was short-lived as it later had to be torn down due to weakened abutments.

When the bridge met its end, it was one of the oldest cov-ered bridges in Vermont, built shortly after a woman died trying to cross the Winooski River on horseback in 1812.

Survival storiesTom O’Neill’s family planned to escape the rising river on a wagon loaded with food, blankets and belongings. But the river came up so fast it swept the wagon away be-fore they could get on it. Tom’s family, along with visitors from Massachusetts, retreated back into their house “with 13 of us in one large bedroom at the top of the stairs. If the water had come up one more step it would have got-ten onto the second floor. We were cold and scared. We

were there for two days. Men in rowboats came up to the porch roof and we went out the second story window.”

Virginia Conant Stambaugh remembered the sights and sounds of the flood. “Dad had just stored potatoes in the cellar and as the water came up into the cellar, we could hear the potatoes hitting against the first floor. Water came into the first floor of the house. We watched the river as houses went down the valley.”

After the floodFor several months, people and goods had to be ferried across the Winooski River. The Central Vermont Railroad also suffered heavy damage, especially near the Check-ered House Bridge. Hundreds of workers and soldiers were brought in to restore the railroad tracks, sleeping in cots at local churches. It took three months to get the railroad up and running again.

The flood ushered in an era of massive bridge building in Vermont. According to a report to Governor Weeks by an advisory committee of engineers on flood control, 1,258 bridges were damaged or destroyed in Vermont during the 1927 flood. The total cost of damage was nearly $25 million – about $500 million in today’s dollars.

To prevent catastrophic floods in the future, a series of dams was put in place. A larger dam and reservoir was built in Waterbury in the late 1930’s to supplement other

see 1927 Flood, page 3

Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Vermont Libraries

Note that the alignment of the temporary detour is in approximately the same place as the original covered Checkered House Bridge.

“The reconstruction of the

Checkered House Bridge is

especially innovative, resulting

from the collaboration of many

parties and the strong desire to

maintain as much of the integrity

of this historic structure as

possible. I have been an integral

part of the development of this

project for 20 years and it is

exciting to see this progress. ”Carolyn Carlson, Project Manager

Vermont Agency of Transportation Project Manager

Checkered House Bridge Summer 2011

Planning Organization’s weekly travel alert (sent to all local newspaper, TV and radio stations), and On the Road with Vermont Agency of Transportation, a radio program that provides live up-dates every Monday morning between 6:30 and 8:00 a.m. on nine state radio stations.

The Town of Richmond is also helping get the word out through the internet. Town officials circu-late notices through the Front Porch Forum and a town-managed e-mail distribution list.

Traffic alerts and construction updates are also posted weekly on the project’s website, www.checkeredhousebridge.com. Look for the text box on the right hand side of the website’s home page for the most recent information.

Periodic updates and photos of construction prog-ress are also placed on the project website. For ex-ample, if you had wanted to see where the new temporary detour would be located BEFORE it was built, there was a concept drawing on the website.

If a significant event is anticipated, e-alerts will be issued to those on our contact list. You can add yourself to our contact list via the website (address above).

What should YOU do to stay informed? Please check the website for information as the proj-ect moves forward, or use it to add yourself to the contact list, ask questions, or submit com-ments to the project team. The website address is: www.checkeredhousebridge.com.

STay informed, from page 11927 flood, from page 2

smaller dams on tributaries to the Winooski built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1925.

Many Richmond farmers participated in Project Ver-mont, a program sponsored by the federal Soil Con-servation Service and the University of Vermont from 1938-41, to stabilize riverbanks by planting vegeta-tion. A stand of white pine trees behind the Checkered House, now the Kitchen Table Bistro, still stands as a reminder of this program.

Richmond’s 1929 Checkered House Bridge is a proto-type of the hundreds of bridges built in Vermont dur-ing the post-flood reconstruction period. Green, metal, truss bridges are a familiar landmark in Vermont’s land-scape. Efforts to preserve the Checkered House Bridge in the reconstruction project reflect the special place this bridge holds in history.

(Information sources used in the story were: Richmond Vermont: A History of More Than 200 Years, by Harriet Wheatley Riggs et. al. and The Troubled Roar of the Waters : Vermont in Flood and Recovery, 1927-1931 by Deborah Pickman Clifford and Nicholas R. Clifford)

The traveling public received advance notice of traf-fic delays caused by blasting through e-mail alerts, newspapers, radio, and Vermont’s 511 Travel Advi-sory System. Special efforts were made by the con-tractor to let local schools know that their afternoon bus routes would be delayed.

According to Russ Insogna, Project Superintendent for Harrison & Burrowes, people who experienced traffic delays while the temporary bridge detour was being constructed were very polite. Comments to the project website have been supportive. One long-time resident wrote, “thanks to all for fixing our bridge.”

Several concerns about sight-distance at Johnnie Brook Road, received after the detour opened, have been addressed by the project team. At a meeting on June 29, the project engineers determined on-site that this concern could be addressed by “shift-ing” the intersection about 25 feet to the west to allow for a more open view of the intersection.

bridge openS, from page 1

The Checkered House Bridge was a prototype in its day. In some ways it is still “paving the way”, as its reconstruction is being managed through a “de-sign-build” process. Traditionally, Vermont Agen-cy of Transportation (VTrans) projects have used a “design-bid-build process”, where either VTrans or an engineering consultant designs the project and develops construction specifications, then contrac-tors bid the work based on the specs. In design-build, one entity takes responsibility for both de-signing and building the bridge, thus assuming part of the risk. Considered an innovative method of project delivery, design-build is still relatively rare, but is increasingly used by public works agencies to deliver projects faster and more economically. The Vermont legislature authorized design-build delivery by VTrans in 2009.The Checkered House Bridge is VTrans’s second design-build project.

Checkered House Bridge Summer 2011

Still paving the way...

Temporary bridge tucked between two others

Late March: Bridge contractor surveys site where the new bridge will go.

Mid-May: Much of the steel frame is in place, but workers continue to put the bridge together, piece by piece.

June 22: The new bridge opens.

It took many tons of steel and lots of rock blasting, but a temporary bridge across the Winooski River was opened to traffic in three months.