Wire Bridge
By some accounts, Colonel F. B. Morse was a fool. The former army engineer built a bridge to span the Carrabassett River, ordering the suspension wires all the way from England, and then paid good money to have those cables hauled overland from Hallowell by a team of oxen. Even though the bridge had been voted on at the 1840 town meeting and money allocated for its construction, not everyone agreed with the plan, and so what is today known as the New Portland Wire Bridge became known among some as Colonel Morse’s Fool Bridge.
Mainers love a good yarn, and the Colonel Morse story is a good one, but according to available records, not true. Records show the bridge was constructed in 1866 by someone else entirely.
The bridge, however, is remarkable on its own merits. With a span of nearly 200 feet between its towers, it is the only surviving example of a suspension bridge with covered wood towers in the United States and is on the National Register of Historic Places. As the only wire suspension bridge built in the 1800s in Maine that still exists, the state legislature passed legislation in 1959 for its protection and launched a major rehabilitation.
Colonel Morse’s Fool Bridge is not only a historic civil engineering landmark; it is still in use today. Its 12-foot driving lane only permits one car at a time to cross over the river 30 feet below.
