Famously associated as the site at which Revolutionary War hero Prudence Cummings Wright apprehended loyalist spies in April of 1775, there has been a bridge across the Nashua River at this location since about 1740. The bridge has been rebuilt or replaced several times throughout its history.

A covered bridge was first erected in 1845 when Pepperell’s town meeting voted to build a new bridge at the site, modeled after Runnell’s Bridge over the Nashua River in Hollis, New Hampshire. Believing the piers to be sound, they hired Captain Levi Parker for the sum of $1,200 without contracting for the pier’s replacement. Parker was also allowed to keep the materials from the old bridge precipitating a prolonged drama over the bridge’s construction.

Upon completion, the Bridge Committee reported in detail how the Pepperell bridge was inferior to the Hollis bridge and Captain Parker was required to warranty the bridge for ten years for which he was paid one dollar per year. When his warranty ended in 1858, Parker asserted that the pier under the bridge was his property, offering to let it remain for fifty dollars being paid him, otherwise he would remove it. His explanation, that he had added a pier for his own benefit and safety was not well received and the Selectmen were instructed to build a new pier if they could not settle with Capt. Parker for the old one.

Almost 100 years later, it was determined that bridge foundations would no longer support truck traffic and in 1958 it closed. A wider covered bridge was built and dedicated in 1963, championed by State Representative Chester Waterous, for whom the bridge was named. This structure was closed to vehicular traffic in 2008.

In 2010, a replacement covered bridge reopened on the site and today the Historic Pepperell Covered Bridge is one of only three covered bridges on public Massachusetts Roads that are open to vehicular traffic.

Source: Pepperell Historical Society

Photo courtesy of the Town of Pepperell