Help keep local journalism free and independent with a one-time or sustaining gift today. We can’t do it without you. Will you join us?
One week left! Help keep local journalism free and independent with a one-time or sustaining gift today. We can’t do it without you. Will you join us?
Advertisement
Since arriving in Vermont last year, Phill Gatenby has become smitten with the state’s covered bridges. He’s started a video visiting each of the state’s historic or authentic covered bridges. Photo by Tim Calabro/Herald
This story by Tim Calabro was first published in The Herald on Sept. 11, 2025.
Phill Gatenby rolled over the Moxley Bridge in Chelsea with a plastic skeleton riding shotgun in his Jeep, having made the long drive from Brattleboro for an early morning visit. Just a year ago, the Manchester, England native — by way of Florida — had never laid eyes on a covered bridge. Now he’s smitten.
Gatenby recalled seeing a covered bridge while driving around and thinking, “Oh, that’s interesting. I’d never seen a covered bridge in my life before. Never really heard of them,” he said. “A couple days later, I was going to Townshend, and all of a sudden it’s the Dummerston Bridge, and I’m just like, different size, different shape, different color.”
He stopped for directions and as he got lost on the back roads, he saw more and more covered bridges.
What started as casual curiosity has evolved into a quest: visit and film all 100 of Vermont’s authentic, historic covered bridges and share the journey on YouTube in a series titled “Vermont’s 100 Covered Bridges.”
Advertisement
So far he’s been to 50 and cranked out 37 videos of his visits — one every Sunday.
The most recent set of episodes has focused on the covered bridges of Tunbridge, Chelsea, and Randolph.
No two are quite alike. From king and queen trusses to parallelogram-shaped spans built on bends, like some on the First Branch, Gatenby has come to appreciate their variety and character.
And, stepping back from the bridges, the entire scene fascinates Gatenby.
“I mentioned this in the Kingsbury Bridge [episode]. I was at the bridge and I looked, and you’ve got the green mountains in the background and rolling hills. Then you’ve got the farm with the — is it the corn towers? — the river and a covered bridge. And it just says, like, you can’t get more Vermont!”
Advertisement
Gatenby’s process is rigorous. Each episode takes hours to shoot and edit. He gets different angles — sometimes driving through a bridge three or four times for the right shot. He’s waded into rivers, climbed steep banks, and once filmed inside a long-retired bridge that had been turned into a town shed.
“I try and do something that’s consistent,” he says. “So it’s, you know, the same start, the same middle. I go in the river. I’ve been in every single river so far.”
Gatenby credits community access TV stations — first Okemo Valley TV in Ludlow and now Brattleboro Community TV — for helping him build his skills and loaning him equipment.
“They literally brilliantly sat down and five, six, seven weeks went through how you do it,” he recalled.
Gatenby’s episodes go out via Okemo Valley TV’s YouTube channel and have regular times on the Okemo Valley and Brattleboro TV stations.
Advertisement
Form, Function,History
Vermont once had more than 600 covered bridges, Gatenby noted, but flooding and age have winnowed down the number greatly. Now, 100 remain and many towns hold clusters of them.
Tunbridge, for example, boasts five (Flint, Larkin, Mill, Cilley and Howe), with the Moxley bridge just over the Chelsea line. Randolph has three (Kingsbury, Gifford, and Braley or Johnson), all of them along the Second Branch.
Gatenby pointed out that three of the First Branch bridges were built by the same person, Arthur Adams. That’s a phenomenon common to covered bridges, Gatenby noted. Oftentimes the same person who had the skills to build a bridge would become the area’s go-to expert.
As Gatenby visits each of the 100 covered bridges spread throughout the state, he points out the history and construction techniques used in each, particularly the suspension methods unique to covered bridges. Most covered bridges in the White River Valley make use of modified king trusses, posts fitted into a triangle, which provide strength to the structure. Some, like the Moxley bridge, use both king trusses and square queen trusses around them.
Vermont’s covered bridges aren’t just structural relics, though — they’re cultural icons.
Advertisement
Some have graced the silver screen, including the Kingsbury Bridge in Randolph, used by Alfred Hitchcock as scenery in his 1955 film “The Trouble with Harry.”
“North by Northwest” has its dramatic crop duster strafing Cary Grant, Gatenby jokes in one of his episodes before cutting to a humble, scenic shot featuring the South Randolph bridge. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as glamorous as that!”
The Chiselville bridge in Sunderland — Gatenby’s favorite so far — featured in “Baby Boom,” Diane Keaton’s 1987 film, and a year later, in the 1988 Chevy Chase and Madolyun Smith Osborne comedy, the Upper Falls bridge in Weathersfield made for a memorable gag (“I wouldn’t go that way if I were you”).
Another memorable stop is East Corinth, where the prop bridge used in “Beetlejuice” was fabricated out of whole cloth for the two weeks of filming. “Thousands of people go there every year,” he said, noting that the set-piece, used now as a shed at a ski area, doesn’t count among the authentic and historic bridges he films.
Nor, he said, does the Quechee Bridge. Though it is often mistaken for a traditional covered bridge, it’s just a facade.
Advertisement
“It’s concrete and steel. There’s very little wood,” Gatenby said. “You see the wood on the outside and the roof.”
Traditional bridges are completely made from wood and use a variety of truss systems to strengthen the span.
Place and Purpose
Gatenby moved to Vermont from Florida in July of last year. He now lives in Brattleboro with his wife and works as a shift supervisor at a home for adults with mental health issues.
“I’m a trained youth worker in England,” he said, having spent years working for the Prince’s Trust, a charity founded by King Charles. His day job might be demanding, but the early hours leave room for exploration.
“Three o’clock to 11:30 at night, so the daytime allows me to spend time in the TV studio,” he says. That flexibility has enabled him to squeeze in long road trips, sometimes filming six or seven bridges in a single day. “I’ve got to do minimum six, seven bridges each trip now,” he added. “To make it worth it.”
Advertisement
This Sunday, the show’s 38th episode will be released.
“I’m doing a little special 50th episode,” he said, noting the halfway point in the 100-bridge journey. “That’s where I’m bringing in stuff like the Quechee bridge. Because people said, ‘Oh, you didn’t go to the Quechee.’”
As the series nears its midpoint, Gatenby’s audience is slowly growing, both online and in the communities he visits.
“It’s just amazing … you know, and I’m just visiting them all,” he said, “places that I wouldn’t have got to see otherwise.”
With 50 more bridges to go, Vermont’s covered bridge guy still has miles to travel and stories to uncover.Gatenby’s series of covered bridge videos can be watched on Okemo Valley and Brattleboro public television stations or found on YouTube.
Vermont’s governor has signed legislation that will allow adults over the age of 21 to legally possess twice as much marijuana as they could previously, enable interstate cannabis commerce and make other changes to rules for licensed businesses.
Gov. Phil Scott (R) on Friday announced that he approved the large-scale cannabis regulatory reform bill, S. 278, which passed both chambers of the legislature last month.
One of the main impacts of the new law for consumers is that it doubles the prior legal possession limit to up to two ounces of marijuana or 10 grams of hashish.
The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (D), also allows the governor to enter into compacts with other states for cross-border cannabis trade.
Advertisement
The legislative text notes that there is a “shifting federal posture on regulated cannabis markets” and says it is “the intent of the General Assembly to prepare for the possibility of regional or interstate cannabis markets.”
A provision says that such agreements could only move forward if federal law is amended to allow for interstate transfer of cannabis, if a federal law is enacted that blocks use of agency funds to prevent such transfers, if the U.S. Department of Justice issues a memo allowing or tolerating such activity or if the state attorney general certifies that entering into interstate marijuana commerce agreements “will not result in significant legal risk to this State based on review of federal judicial decisions and administrative action.”
— Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.
Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on Patreon to get access. —
The bill signed by the governor also creates a pilot program for cannabis events at which businesses could sell products but where cannabis consumption would not be allowed.
Advertisement
The legislation additionally says that housing rental agreements cannot prohibit tenants from “possessing cannabis or cannabis products within the rental premises or using cannabis or cannabis products within a dwelling unit, except that a rental agreement may prohibit the use of lighted cannabis or cannabis products intended for inhalation within the rental premises.”
It also eliminates the vertically integrated license type and reduces licensing fees for cannabis cultivation businesses, among other technical changes to current statute.
Earlier versions of the bill would have altered potency restrictions for cannabis products, reduced taxes and allowed on-site consumption licenses and delivery services, but those provisions were removed during the legislative process prior to final passage.
In 2018, Scott signed a bill to legalize marijuana possession and home cultivation and then allowed subsequent legislation to legalize commercial cannabis sales to take effect without his signature in 2020.
Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.
Advertisement
Marijuana Moment is made possible with support from readers. If you rely on our cannabis advocacy journalism to stay informed, please consider a monthly Patreon pledge.
PAWLET — The Pawlett Historical Society and Rupert Historical Society will co-host a talk, “The Great Bennington Battle and Vermont,” with acclaimed historian Howard Coffin, at 1 p.m. on Sunday, July 5, at the Pawlet Town Hall, 122 School Street, Pawlet.
The surrender at Saratoga of a British army under John Burgoyne, now almost 250 years ago, has long been called the decisive battle of the American Revolution. But perhaps Burgoyne was doomed after the Battle of Bennington, a bloody day of fighting along the Vermont border that happened two months before Saratoga?
Coffin will discuss the history-changing Burgoyne campaign, focusing on the dramatic battle of Great Bennington—a Vermont battle as well as a New York one. He will also review heroes John Stark and Seth Warner and the Vermont Constitution, itself about to turn 250 years old.
Advertisement
A seventh-generation Vermonter, Howard Coffin is the author of four books on the Civil War: “Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in Today’s Vermont;” “Full Duty: Vermonters in the Civil War;” “Nine Months to Gettysburg; and The Battered Stars,” as well as “Guns Over the Champlain Valley,” a book on military sites along the Champlain Corridor.
This free event starts at 12 p.m. with a display of the first coinage minted in the United States, and works by noted photographers Neil Rappaport and John Pelton from our towns’ Bicentennial events in 1976. Be sure to mingle after Coffin’s presentation for an ice cream social with Stewart’s Ice Cream. This event is accessible to all, and made possible by the Vermont Humanities Speakers Bureau. For details on the event, contact Rose Smith at 802-645-0306 or roseksmith1925@gmail.com. For information on Vermont Humanities, visit vermonthumanities.org.
QUECHEE, Vt. (WCAX) – Crews worked across the White River Valley on Friday to restore power and clean up debris after two EF-1 tornadoes touched down in Vermont, including one that swept through Quechee.
Joe Haynes stared over his yard in Woodstock, with chunks of his roof scattered across it, wondering about the next steps.
Reporter Connor Ullathorne: How long will this all take to clean up?
Joe Haynes: Oh, I have no idea.
Advertisement
He said he’s lucky he and his nearby neighbors are safe and are not blocked in.
“Some of the trees were down. They’ll be down for awhile but they can make their way out,” Haynes said.
Crews in Woodstock continued clearing trees and downed power lines along Route 4. That’s where Tiffany Miller was working inside the Mountain Creamery when the tornado passed right over the store. Nobody was injured, but their new walk-in storage ended up in the trees.
“It’s definitely a big setback for us. We were getting ready to have it wired up tomorrow. So I mean we definitely have a lot of elbow grease and hours to put in to get back up to where we were,” Miller said.
She said she was happy to see how many customers have checked in on them.
Advertisement
“It’s nice to see that no matter what, in some bad case– storms or indifferent– that we can still come together and be there for each other,” Miller said.
Farther east in Quechee, workers hacked away at trees and swept away debris along the golf course and roads.
“It’s crazy they want to see. Everybody cares about their community and all their assets and amenities, so it’s nice to see everybody come together,” Quechee Club General Manager Brian Kelley said.
Kelley said they were out early Friday, and many residents were shocked at the damage. He’s still hopeful the area can come together and support each other.
“We normally do about 200 rounds a day going into one of our peak weekends. We’ve got the balloon festival this weekend, so we have that population in town, so a little bit of disappointment but people have been great and supportive, and we’ll be back at it tomorrow,” Kelley said.
Advertisement
Kelley said it should be a few days until they are back to full force in Quechee.
Many others across the region told us they’re now focused on getting back to normal.
Click here for the latest forecast from the WCAX First Alert Weather Team.
 100vw, 1090px”/><figcaption class=)
Since arriving in Vermont last year, Phill Gatenby has become smitten with the state’s covered bridges. He’s started a video visiting each of the state’s historic or authentic covered bridges. Photo by Tim Calabro/Herald
