In response, Dr. Richard M. Candee, a highly involved local historian, has taken action. He is proposing that Memorial Bridge be named to "America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places" by the National Trust. Attention brought by this same status helped save the restored Wentworth by the Sea hotel. Both NH and ME own the bridge and both transportation departments have considered restoring the historic structure. It was, according to Candee, the #1 bridge on the NH DOT "Red List" slated for attention and repair. But now both sides are shifting their view, Candee is hoping to draw attention to the plight of Memorial Bridge. Up to a dozen organizations, including the Portsmouth Historical Society and both the city of Kittery and Portsmouth support his action.

We’ll have plenty to say on this topic as the winter rolls on. Any plans to eliminate it are bound to meet heated protest locally, especially if the new Obama administration, as promised, turns federal attention (and funding) to America’s roads and bridges.

But for the moment, let’s just look at what we might lose if plans to eliminate Memorial Bridge are adopted. The following summary comes directly from Prof. Candee’s nomination form to the National Trust:

"Memorial Bridge, across the Piscataqua River between Maine and New Hampshire, was the first major vertical lift bridge in the eastern United States. At its 1923 dedication as both states’ War Memorial to WW I, this bridge had the longest lift span in the country (297 feet), making it the direct prototype for later vertical lift bridges with clear spans of over 300 feet. Its patented Waddell vertical lift, with towers extending 201 feet above mean high water, was the highest in the nation, and its 150-foot vertical clearance above mean high water, achieved through a 129-foot maximum lift, was one of the highest. Today, Memorial Bridge is one of the oldest operational lift bridges in the United States. It retains physical integrity, with alterations having been limited largely to decks, railings, and mechanical systems. It and a related historic district have been determined eligible at the national level for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

The history of transportation in the United States is written all across our landscape. Among the most evocative embodiments of that history are our metal truss and moveable bridges. Whether rusting as ruins or carrying us safely over the greatest rivers, these structures proclaim our endeavor, extending from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, to cross obstacles of an ever more formidable scale. Though most are rooted motionlessly in the earth, metal truss bridges are among the most dynamic of human creations.

Metal truss bridges represent human thought given physical expression. These spans embody the early professional maturity of American civil engineering. They express nineteenth-century engineers’ newfound ability to analyze the precise compressive or tensile stresses in a complex structure, and to design a bridge that would carry a specific load with a known factor of safety. They owe their physical existence to improved manufacturing techniques for wrought iron and steel. Because iron and steel are strong both in tension and compression, the earliest metal trusses, designed in the age of horse-drawn and early automobile traffic, were almost ethereal in appearance, echoing in their thin metal sections the delicate lines of the engineer’s stress diagrams.

Metal truss and moveable bridges reflect a crucial chapter in American economic and transportation history. In the late 1800s, rural roads in the United States were a national disgrace, rutted and dusty in the summer and a sea of mud in the spring. Our poorly-maintained highway system isolated rural residents, cut them off from potential markets for their produce, wasted the energy of draft animals, and worsened the pervasive problem of farm abandonment.

Beginning in the 1880s, roads in the United States began to be transformed by the "Good Roads" movement, a campaign for reform of rural transportation to improve highways and rebuild their bridges. A number of enterprising bridge companies began to market iron and steel truss spans as substitutes for deteriorated wooden bridges. The resulting legacy of metal bridges is reflected in a number of truss designs, most of American origin. Some are high or "through" trusses, with overhead lateral bracing. Others are low or "pony" trusses, open at the top. Differing arrangements of the web members of the trusses result give specific names to recognizable truss designs ("Pratt," "Parker," "Warren," etc.), and allow these designs to perform their structural functions in a variety of ways.

Rarest of these metal truss bridges, and often the hardest to preserve, are those with moveable trusses, whether vertical lifts like the Memorial Bridge or the dozens of other bridge types with rising or swinging sections to permit through navigation of the nation’s rivers, canals and other waterways. "

Reprinted by permission © 2008 Richard M. Candee