You Can’t Get There From Here, Gates Farm Covered Bridge
With a heavy twang in their voice, you might have heard this: “You can’t get thar from heah”. I’ve lived here in New England for 20 years (before 22 years in the AF) and I heard this saying from many comedians on TV so I assumed it got said rather frequently.
Sadly, I’ve said it a few times in jest, but never really meant it. In fact, I was in Maine and a gentleman broke into a smile when he said it to me. He said afterward he’d been waiting to say that for years. Why he got to say it, I don’t remember now, but today you will hear it from me.
Last fall, Lisa and I were driving from Swanton Vermont to Stark New Hampshire on Route 15 and Lisa told me that, as many times as we had been on this route, we had missed several covered bridges. So we decided to go in search of a Vermont covered bridge. As she says this, we are in Cambridge Vermont, and just about to cross the Seymour River. When I spy out of the corner of my little eye, a covered bridge. At the moment she’s checking for the nearest covered bridge, I tell her we just missed one right here!
She tells me that is impossible because none are listed in the Gazetteer. I go down the road and turn around as she is trying to figure out if the Gazetteer was wrong, or if she misread it. (Note* she didn’t misread it, it was not listed) I park and there is a tractor path down to the covered bridge, but it feels like private property. So I photograph it from the road. (good thing, as it turns out!)
As I get back in the car, she is adamant, “There is not supposed to be a covered bridge in this spot according to the Gazetteer“. (She’s right, but we have no idea of what we just found) Since we couldn’t figure that out at the moment we moved on planning to research it later.
Photography Tip: I shot this at 2:07 in the afternoon and this presents us with a contrasty problem with the light. I fixed this problem by shooting 3 shots, rapid fire. Most cameras can be set up to “Bracket” 3 or more shots. This means you tell the camera to shoot X amount of images and to put anywhere from 1/2 of a stop to 2 stops of light between each image. so in my case, I held down the button till the camera fired three shots (the limit of my camera) and the camera gave me 1 image balanced, one shot was 1 and 3/4 overexposed and 1 and 3/4 underexposed. When I get home I blend the three together in Google’s EFX HDR pro and come up with the image at right. The image above was taken a bit further with painting software from Topaz labs.
The reason I went to the extra trouble is that this covered bridge is more photogenic than most. I really liked the leading line of the tractor path which actually made this a wonderful vantage point. I had knocked off one more covered bridge in my quest to photograph all the covered bridges in Vermont and then New England. We left and arrived at our B&B in Stark NH.
Lisa found a Stowe Vermont guidebook from 2008 at the Inn (it was a treasure trove of vintage memorabilia), and she told me it had an article about the Gates Farm Covered Bridge. It used to be called the Little River Covered Bridge. Due to the Seymour River changing its course in the 50s, the owners of the Gate’s Farm were cut off from their fields. Since the new route of the river made the old Little River Covered Bridge useless, the bridge was picked up and moved to this new location on the Gates property.
So, it turns out I was correct. First, this bridge was on private property, and without permission “You can’t get thar from heah”! You can see it from the road but unless you find a family member to get permission from, you should not get any closer to it than that. Being a private covered bridge is also why it’s not in the Gazetteers. They don’t usually list privately owned items.
So, that is today’s story. The Gazetteers are a great resource, but they may not always have all the information you want. So keep your eyes open for those small guidebooks. They can be useful to pick up on your arrival in any town.
You never know what will be in them and whether they will have a nugget of fascinating lore.
Jeff Foliage Folger
Autumn is a state of mind more than a time of year – Jeff Foliage
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Yes, that Peacham view is one of our favorites. Thank you for your comments on this.
Not a problem, Peacham is one of my Favorites