About the Worrall Bridge

from Spanning Time: Tour 14 - Rockingham to Grafton¹

 

Worrall Bridge crosses Williams River on Williams Road. Williams Road is clearly marked and leaves Route 103 to the north. After crossing the bridge, the road continues on to Brockway's Mills Gorge. There, the Williams River flows between sheer hundred-foot cliffs after dropping down a series of cascades. Sanford Granger completed the eighty-three-foot bridge in 1868, just before the Flood of 1869. The gorge must have been an awesome sight with the flood waters passing though it. The new bridge was very nearly lost.

Over the years, the Worrall Bridge has been modified, perhaps because it was built without the usual strengthening secondary chords. The lattice has been reinforced by six pairs of seven by six-inch vertical posts and further steadied by iron rods and steel cables. As with many other wooden bridges, distribution beams have been tie-bolted under the deck system, and the stone abutments have been encased in concrete. There is a twenty-foot timber ramp on steel beams at the northeast end, that serves to drain excess road water away from the bridge deck.