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by Kimberly Lyon Abare
Learning the Craft: Gatenby joined the Vermont Covered Bridge Society, where he learned that the organization was partnering with Okemo Valley TV, a nonprofit community television station based in Ludlow, to produce a covered bridge series-and that the station offered hands-on training in video editing for anyone willing to put in the time. “Every week I went for two hours and they trained me up,” he says. Though he now edits his episodes at Brattleboro Community TV closer to home, all episodes air through the Okemo Valley TV platform, which has more than 1.4k subscribers on YouTube. The series, titled Vermont’s 100 Covered Bridges, drops a new episode each Sunday. In 2025, Okemo Valley TV honored Gatenby with its Outstanding Achievement Award, recognition that this DIY passion project has become, in the words of the station’s executive director, “first-rate entertainment.” Gatenby also received the “Series of the Year” award in November 2025.
Each episode follows a careful formula: the history of the bridge, who built it, when, and how it has survived or been restored over the years. He also explores the waterway beneath it-where the river originates, where it flows-and weaves in archival news footage where bridges have been damaged or destroyed. When a bridge in Lyndon was famously struck by an oversized vehicle, Gatenby cuts in the actual TV news report from the day it happened. When Tropical Storm Irene swept through Vermont in 2011, he uses footage that local residents uploaded to YouTube showing their beloved bridges being swallowed by floodwaters.
His sources are deep and varied: the Vermont Covered Bridge Society’s exhaustive database, a 1946 book on Vermont bridges that he keeps close at hand, a researcher who visited every bridge by motorcycle about a decade ago and documented each one on a personal webpage, and perhaps most powerfully, Facebook. Before filming each town, he reaches out to local community groups, and the stories come flooding in.
“People I’ve connected with, people who live near the bridges, they give me a lot of information,” he says. “Google is my friend, as they say. But between the Vermont Covered Bridge Society, the books I’ve got, and people who have been there, that’s where I get it from.”
Five Bridges, One Town: When Gatenby arrived in Northfield to film its five covered bridges-the Station Bridge, the Lower Cox Bridge, the Upper Cox Bridge, the Slaughter House Bridge, and the Moseley (or Stoney Brook) Covered Bridge-he encountered something he had not quite expected from a small Vermont town: an outpouring.
He posted photos in three different Northfield Facebook groups, announcing each upcoming Sunday episode. The response dwarfed anything he had seen in other towns.
“The response I’ve had from Northfield has been better than any of the towns,” he says, noting that his posts drew 100 to 150 engagements where other communities might produce 20 or 30. “And it’s people who don’t necessarily still live there, and they’re all saying, ‘Thanks for posting this, I lived there, I haven’t lived there in 20 years, I went there every day through school, I used to fish between the two bridges along the Dog River.’ And it sparked more memories in the people, or ex-residents of Northfield, than it has in any other town.”
That response, he says, reflects something extraordinary about Northfield’s geography. Of all the places he has visited across the state, it is the only one where you can stand in one spot and see three covered bridges within a single quarter-mile stretch.
“You can stand in the middle and see the Station Bridge and the Lower Cox Bridge,” he explains. “And I actually went back a couple of weeks ago, when the leaves were still off the trees, and I scrambled up a bank, and at one point, I could actually see all three bridges.”
Once the leaves return, the third disappears around a bend. But in that brief window between winter and spring, Northfield offers something no other town in Vermont can: three historic covered bridges visible at once, the Dog River threading through them all.
The final Northfield episode-Episode 71, covering the Moseley Covered Bridge, also known as the Stoney Brook Covered Bridge-aired Sunday, April 20, 2026. Northfield’s five bridges were the last Gatenby filmed before he paused for the winter in October, and they hold a special place in his mind.
“They live in an absolutely amazing area with brooks and streams and rivers and covered bridges,” he says of Northfield residents. “I’ve just got the one bridge in Brattleboro-they’ve got five.”
Unforgettable Moments on the Road: For a project of this scope, there are bound to be moments that stand apart – and Gatenby has collected his share.
He recalls the Cooley Bridge in Pittsfield, Episode 41, with a laugh that still carries a note of disbelief. While working his way to the water to get footage of the bridge from below, he got stuck in the mud of the brook, both legs sinking to the knee. In trying to haul himself free, he lost his balance and went completely under.
“Fortunately, I held my hand up,” he says. “My phone was on a stick-the phone stayed dry.” He finished filming the bridge that afternoon. Soaking wet.
Then there is the AM Foster Bridge in Cabot, Episode 50, which he describes with a reverence he reserves for very few places. It is the only covered bridge in Vermont not situated in a valley. It sits on the top of a plain, spanning a man-made pond. Stand on one side and the White Mountains of New Hampshire stretch across the horizon. Turn around, and the Green Mountains fill the view.
“It was just spectacular,” he says quietly. “Just spectacular being up there.”
And then there is the Taftsville Bridge in Woodstock, Episode 27-a striking red span that he had heard described as spectacular so many times he had begun to quietly discount it. He pulled up on the high road and looked down at it below him.
“It was just like, wow,” he says. “You can access it on all four sides because two roads run in parallel and the bridge joins them. I’ve got a fantastic picture of it with the sun setting behind me. And another picture from the side where the red of the bridge is completely reflected underneath and inside it.” The bridge was built with three trusses-an accidental structural innovation that, as Gatenby puts it, “they tried, and it worked.”
The Bridge That Lost Its Twin: Of all the stories Gatenby has uncovered in 84 episodes, one that perhaps says the most about time, loss, and resilience involves a bridge in Rutland that most people have never entered-and almost no one had filmed from the inside.
The Twin Bridge in Rutland was, as its name suggests, one of a matched pair spanning the East Creek. In 1949, a dam upstream broke. The resulting floodwater destroyed one bridge outright and damaged the abutments of the other beyond repair for vehicle traffic. The town built a modern steel and concrete crossing in its place. But they didn’t tear down the surviving covered bridge. They moved it-lifted it and set it down 30 yards from the creek-and it has served as a municipal storage shed ever since.
It still counts among Vermont’s authentic covered bridges. Every beam, every truss, every plank of the roof remains intact. There is simply no water beneath it.
Gatenby contacted the Rutland town highway department, explained his project, and asked if he could film inside. They said yes. He was, as far as he can tell, the first member of the public ever to enter and document it on film.
“The door creaked open,” he recalls, “and I’m like, the door’s just open. And I go in.” The truss structure was fully preserved. The bridge, relocated and repurposed, had been standing in that spot for 75 years.
“It had a twin,” he says. “It lost its twin. It was removed. And for 75 years since 1949, it has just stood next to the creek and is used as a storage shed for the town.”
There is another bridge, in Wethersfield, with a happier ending-also moved to make way for floodplain work, but then relocated again in 1986, back over a brook where it could serve as a bridge once more. The Twin Bridge in Rutland has no such ending. Not yet.
“Almost like it loses its purpose and finds a new purpose,” said Kimberly Abare during the interview. Gatenby paused, then agreed.
Why Covered Bridges Still Matter: Ask Phill Gatenby what covered bridges mean to him and he doesn’t hesitate. “For me, it’s like stepping back in time,” he says. He describes visiting three bridges in Randolph-Episodes 30, 31, and 32-and feeling as though he had wandered onto the set of a 1940s film. The cockerels were crowing. Almost no cars came through. Time moved differently there.
“It’s a million miles away from New York or Boston or Burlington,” he says. “It’s just this completely different way of life that still exists, with the covered bridges as the backdrop.”
Vermont once had more than 600 covered bridges. Flooding, age, and the relentless logic of progress have reduced that number to 100. Gatenby points to a conversation he had with a town administrator in Waitsfield-home to the oldest covered bridge in Vermont-who told him that the town held a vote roughly 20 years ago on whether to demolish it. The bridge survived the vote. Not every bridge has been so lucky.
“In this ever-increasing world of build and build and glass towers and concrete,” Gatenby says, “they have to be saved and maintained.”
One of the things that has struck him most is how many lifelong Vermonters-people who have driven through covered bridges their entire lives-have never stopped to ask why they are there or how they were built. His series, he hopes, has started some of those conversations.
“They just took it for granted,” he says. “But they’ve sort of picked up on what I’m doing and realized that, actually, yes, what we have got here is unique.”
The Final Stretch-and What Comes Next: With 84 bridges filmed and 16 to go, Gatenby is in the home stretch. He plans to tackle four bridges in the far northeast on one Saturday, then spend a full weekend away to complete the final 12-six on a Saturday, and the last episode at the Hopkins Bridge in the Town of Enosburg, the northernmost covered bridge in Vermont.
He started at the Green River Bridge in Guilford, the southernmost. He will end at the northernmost. In between: the length of a state, one bridge at a time.
The final episode is expected to air in November 2026. He will still be editing long after the last bridge is filmed.
He knows he will miss it. “When I get to the end of each project,” he says, he has also written two books, “it’s just like, that’s ended now. What am I going to do? I don’t want it to end.”
But this project has opened doors he never anticipated. He recently filmed the Harris Hill Ski Jump tournament in Brattleboro from Camera 7. He filmed a town hall meeting. At 63, he is now seriously considering offering his services to film weddings and events-a second act he could never have imagined before a covered bridge caught his eye on a quiet road in southern Vermont.
“I’m 63,” he says, with what sounds very much like astonishment at his own life. “And I’m just getting started.”
In addition to his work behind the camera, Gatenby is also an author, having written two books that reflect the same curiosity and discipline he brings to his bridge series: Morrissey’s Manchester, The Manchester Musical History Tour (both books are musical related tour guides), and Teenage Kicks (a homage to his beloved Manchester City Football Club).
All 3 books are published by Empire Publications, Manchester, UK http:// www.empire-uk.com
At 63, Gatenby jokes that he is considering making himself available to film weddings.
You can find Phill Gatenby’s series, “Vermont’s 100 Covered Bridges,” on the Okemo Valley TV YouTube channel. His Facebook page is “100 Covered Bridges.” The Northfield episodes, covering the Station Bridge, Lower Cox Bridge, Upper Cox Bridge, Slaughter House Bridge, and the Moseley/Stoney Brook Covered Bridge: Episodes 67 through 71. His most notable episodes include Episode 27 (Taftsville Bridge, Woodstock), Episode 41 (Cooley Bridge, Pittsfield), and Episode 50 (AM Foster Bridge, Cabot)
Our thanks to The Northfield News for permission to republish this article.