Everybody loves the bridge at Livermore Falls but nobody wants to own it

By DAVID BROOKS

Monitor staff

Published: 12-29-2022 4:32 PM

One of New Hampshire’s most interesting-looking bridges straddles one of its handsomest river gorges next to a road and a rail line that have been used for well over a century. It’s the perfect recipe for tourism success in a state that increasingly depends on tourism.

“This could be like Quechee Gorge … or the Flume,” said Malcolm Taylor during a recent tour to what is often called the Pumpkin Seed Bridge spanning Livermore Falls, drawing comparisons to a popular site in Vermont and an iconic New Hampshire attraction.

There’s just one problem: Nobody knows who owns the bridge, and nobody really wants to own it.

The towns that built the bridge say they don’t own it because it was abandoned more than 60 years ago. As for the state of New Hampshire, it owns most adjacent land as well as the river itself. The official Livermore Falls Recreation Area website notes pointedly: “Adjacent to the site, but not owned by the state, is a lenticular truss bridge.”

So the bridge remains in developmental limbo and with it the Livermore Falls area.

“It would be a tremendous place for people to come,” said Evans. “To do that, we’d have to continue the progress of making that area safe and we’ve struggled for years now trying to figure out how to go about that. We believe that funding is out there, but the real bugaboo is ownership of the bridge.”

“In order to have an engineering study, in order to build a viewing area, in order to apply for Seven to Save or other grants, to get on the Register of Historic Places, the first question always involves ownership.”

Architects love it

The Pumpkin Seed Bridge, an unofficial name from its architecturally interesting construction, was built in 1886 by the three adjoining towns – Campton, Holderness and Plymouth – to allow road traffic across the gorge.

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They pooled together $4,100 and hired the Berlin Bridge Co. (that’s Berlin, Connecticut, not Berlin, New Hampshire) to build an iron bridge after a couple of wooden ones had been previously washed away. They built a wrought-iron structure in which the supporting lenticular trusses are below the travel deck, rather than around or above it. This unusual design, which sort of looks like two pumpkin seeds if you’re imaginative, has drawn admirers ever since.

Those admirers include the Society for Industrial Archaeology – a group that, among other things, is urging that the Concord Gasholder be saved.

The bridge is “the only one of its kind left in New Hampshire and possibly in New England,” wrote David Dunning, president of the Northern New England chapter of the society, in a recent letter that urged the bridge be preserved and restored. “We support efforts not only to save this historic structure … and provision be made for its safer viewing. We are also aware there have been suggestions for converting what is left of the bridge into a safe public viewing deck as in other similar parks around the nation,” he wrote.

The bridge was shut in 1959 because of age. Taylor, 86, who has lived in the area most of his life, says near the end it didn’t feel unsafe but didn’t feel entirely safe, either.

“My grandfather drove me across that bridge – it was getting a little beyond its time even then. When a load of logs went over the bridge it would sway slightly and everybody said, ‘Uh-oh,’ ” he recalled.

Each end of the bridge was cut and allowed to fall into the gorge so that nobody would accidentally walk onto it. You can clamber up onto the deck by climbing the superstructure, but it’s not recommended.

The bridge’s interesting-looking center sections have stood ever since, gathering some rust and surprisingly little graffiti. The bridge or the adjoining state-owned Livermore Falls Recreation Area occasionally makes the news for an unhappy reason, when somebody gets hurt or killed jumping or playing in the roaring waters as the Pemigewasset River squeezes through a long, narrow gorge, but otherwise they remain a lesser-known part of New Hampshire’s outdoor scene.

Livermore falls

Efforts to make more of the area date back a century or longer. In 1918 the state bought land nearby to make Livermore Falls State Forest. In 1962 a team from the University of Connecticut included it in their overview of improving Holderness as a “spectacular resource.” In 1977 Taylor, at the time a state representative, sponsored a bill for the state to buy part of the adjoining property with an eye toward upgrades.

In 1992 the state bought more land, expanding from the state forest to create Livermore Falls Recreation Area. New Hampshire now owns much of the land on both sides of the gorge, although a private association still owns land on the east side.

There’s a small parking lot on Livermore Road off Route 175 and a short, narrow footpath down to graffiti-covered remnants of the old paper mill that gives a terrific view of the bridge just downstream. You can also see an old coffer dam that once helped channel water power to the mill.

And the river itself, running through the gorge, ranges from beautiful when the water level is low to overwhelming when the Pemigewasset is racing in the spring, thundering so fiercely that it feels like a small earthquake is happening.

“We’ve been working on the west side for several years, trying to improve the safety and access. We have some interpretive signage ready to go over there,” said Evans.

Doing more than that will require deciding who owns the bridge. That, in turn, will require the long and expensive process of title searches and historical research, and could well mean going to court. One possibility is to get lawmakers to declare it abandoned, which would force the state to take it over.

Whatever happens, money and effort will be needed to push things along, but it’s hard to get donors and volunteers excited over helping with old legal documents and courtroom hair-splitting. So for the time being it looks like the Pumpkin Seed Bridge will remain an orphan.

“Nobody is seriously suggesting that it be torn down. But the fortitude, the wherewithal to make it safe, improve it and make it part of that great area … that hasn’t been found,” said Evans.

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