Taftsville Covered Bridge over Ottauquechee
— — red boards above slow brown water.
Not only on a wall.
“The Taftsville Covered Bridge spans the Ottauquechee River in the village of Taftsville, three miles east of Woodstock, Vermont. Built in 1836 by Solomon Emmons III, it is one of the oldest surviving covered bridges in Vermont, painted barn-red and standing on two stone piers. At 189 feet across two spans, it carries a single lane of traffic over the river, which here runs shallow and slow between gravel banks under sugar-maple and white pine. from the studio
Taftsville Covered Bridge over Ottauquechee, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Taftsville Covered Bridge is a two-span wooden bridge over the Ottauquechee River in Taftsville, a village within the town of Woodstock, Windsor County, Vermont. It was built in 1836 by Solomon Emmons III, making it one of the three oldest surviving covered bridges in the state. The structure is 189 feet long, painted red, and rests on two stone piers. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1973) and was significantly damaged by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, then restored and reopened in 2013.
Two dry-laid stone piers carry the bridge across the Ottauquechee, set into the riverbed and the south bank. They are local schist, hauled by oxen from quarries in the surrounding hills in the 1830s. The 2013 restoration rebuilt the piers with hidden steel reinforcement after Irene's flood scoured the original stonework, but the visible face was returned to the same stone in the same coursing. The barn-red board siding above is replaced on a roughly thirty-year cycle by Vermont Agency of Transportation crews.
The Ottauquechee River drains a 222-square-mile watershed in east-central Vermont, rising in the Green Mountains near Killington and falling 1,200 feet on its way to the Connecticut River at Quechee. At the Taftsville bridge it runs shallow over gravel most of the year, deep enough for trout but rarely above the lower piers. Irene flooded it twenty feet above normal stage on 28 August 2011, taking out three covered bridges in the watershed; Taftsville survived structurally but with severe damage to the downstream span.