Andover’s Covered Bridges

Postcard of the Andover Center train station and sheds, taken from Lawrence Street Bridge. Covered railroad bridge in the distance. The photo is from a postcard in the Richard Donovan-Trish Kane Collection, Theodore Burr Covered Bridge Resource Center, Oxford, N.Y., provided by Bill Caswell, who made the April presentation. Anyone have additional photos?

Who knew? Most Andoverites are familiar with the town’s two standing covered bridges over the Blackwater River. And some may recall additional wooden structures, on Lawrence Street, Cilleyville Road, Gale Road, and elsewhere.

But who knew that there were once four covered bridges along the railroad tracks that pass through town? Those who attended the Andover Institute sponsored presentation of The Historical Covered Bridges of New Hampshire and Beyond in April found out.

From east to west, the first was located just west of the dead end sections of Short Street, the second about 1600 feet east of Howard George Field on Lawrence Street, once the location of the Andover Center train station, as shown in the picture, the third next to the existing Keniston Bridge on Bridge Road, and the fourth about a third of a mile east of the Potter Place train station. All four have been replaced with iron structures.