Dutchess County Historical Society Yearbook Vol 017 1932

large, covered, wooden bridges; strong heavy abutments of stone with heavy beams crossing on which a plank flooring was laid, the whole enclosed by strong side walls and roof. These side walls and roofs were made of very strong timbers mortised together and held by strong, wooden pins. The long spans were supported in the center, on either side, by a series of strong beams so arranged that most of the weight was taken from the long, horizontal floor beams thereby, not only protecting it from rain and snow, but adding greatly to its strength.

There used to be several of these fine, picturesque old bridges in Dutchess County, crossing the Wappingers Kill and the Fishkill, but they are all gone. I believe the last one was that over the Wappingers at Manchester, about three miles east of the Court House at Poughkeepsie. This old bridge, with one over the Wappingers at Pleasant Valley, had been familiar landmarks for many years and are still fresh in the minds of many of the present generation, but in a few years more will only be past history. Both of these bridges were torn down a few years ago and replaced by modern concrete ones, marking a new era and, with the passing of our generation, will be forgotten. Driving over these old bridges, as I did almost daily for so many years, it somehow seemed like losing old friends when they were taken away. I started out some time ago to look up the history of these bridges but soon found that there were no records. There they had been standing while generation succeeded generation. A romance between her young school teacher and one of the men building the Manchester bridge so impressed itself upon the mind of a little girl that she used to tell the story when she became an old lady, and the romance fixed the year of the building of this bridge as 1848. It was built by Warner Hatch, a well known engineer and contractor of that period. This year was long remembered by the older inhabitants as the year of the great flood which carried away most, if not all, of the bridges over the Wappingers in this vicinity. It was sturdy enough to withstand flood and traffic until the advent of the huge automobile trucks with their heavy loads. Then, with the building of the 67