A presentation on “The Historical Covered Bridges of New Hampshire and Beyond” will be offered on Thursday, April 13, beginning at 7 PM, in the Kearsarge Masonic Lodge, at 38 Cilleyville Road in Potter Place. Free and open to the public, the program will feature illustrated talks by Bill Caswell of Hillsboro, president of the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges; and watercolor artist Conrad Young of Concord, whose book, New Hampshire’s Historical Covered Bridges, was published in 2016.

Co-sponsors of the event are the Andover Institute and the Andover Historical Society.

Each speaker will offer a short presentation followed by a question and answer session. The National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges is a nonprofit organization established in 1950 to help preserve, protect, and document our nation’s remaining historic covered bridges. Caswell has been a member since 1984 and its president since 2013. His presentation will focus on the past and present covered bridges of Andover and surrounding towns. For information about the Society, go to coveredbridgesociety.org.

Artist Young’s book, the culmination of ten years of researching and painting various bridges, consists of eleven paintings and an ink drawing of the oldest state bridge, the Bath-Haverhill. It also has a location map, information on the 54 state-recognized bridges, and trivia. It can be ordered by emailing pnyoung@nullcomcast.net.

Publications by the Covered Bridge Society, by Young, and by the Andover Historical Society will be available for purchase at the presentation.

The Andover Historical Society was established in 1982 to “preserve the history of Andover through the acquisition and conservation of property, artifacts and stories, and to foster an awareness and appreciation for that history within the community.” The Society’s facilities are located in the village of Potter Place, and on Tucker Mountain Road in East Andover. In Potter Place, they include a museum located in the Potter Place railroad station and the old J. C. Emons General Store. A restored one-room schoolhouse is located on Tucker Mountain Road.

Formed as a working group of the Andover Community Association in early 2015, the Andover Institute was so-named to recall a common title for many private educational institutions in 19th century America – the short-lived Highland Lake Institute in East Andover, for one example.

The April program is part of the Institute’s “space exploration” series, designed to introduce local residents to venues more or less off the beaten path for many. The series, now in its third year, has included visits to the Proctor Academy campus; a now-shuttered summer camp for girls; the City of Franklin; a local heron rookery; a guided telescopic viewing of the moon; an introduction to geocaching; the Ice House Museum of Automobilia in New London; overviews of Mount Kearsarge, the Northern Rail Trail, the Sunapee-Ragged Kearsarge Greenway and the hiking trails on the property of Proctor Academy; a Hopkins Pond walkabout in Andover; a local “nano-brewery”; and Muster Field Farm in North Sutton.

Suggestions for future programs and events are welcome, and may be sent to the Andover Community Association at andovercommunity03216@nullgmail.com.