My name is Julio Del Sesto.

I'm a journalism professor, a media producer and a musician.

And this is my friend and world traveler, Sparky Von Plinsky.

And these are my students.

Join us as we visit some of New Hampshire's special places and meet the people that bring them to life.

All right.

Thanks, Appreciate the ride.

Good morning.

Morning.

You ready, man?

What is this amazing trip you've been telling me about?

This is it right here.

What?

The Ashuelot covered bridge.

This bridge?

You see another bridge?

Yeah, this bridge.

You have me pack up my bags, clear my weekend for a bridge that's a mile and a half from my house.

Well, for one, this is not just a bridge.

This is a covered bridge.

Okay.

And two.

Yeah, there are 56 of these bad boys in New Hampshire.

56?

Yeah.

And over the next couple of days, we're going to see them all.

Seriously?

Yeah.

How hard could it be?

Really?

Very hard.

Hard?

That's hard.

56 bridges.

Yeah, we already got one.

56 bridges, only 55 now.

We've already seen this one.

If we could find a place to camp, I've got to call my wife.

We're going to get you more ice.

I got all the ice spots mapped out.

Do I know where all the ice spots are.

Looks like you're ready to go.

Yeah, let's go.

All right, let's do it.

There are only 56 covered bridges in New Hampshire.

Yeah, there's 56 covered bridges that have a little brown sign from the state of Hampshire.

That's good enough for me.

Good.

Because the other answer is really, really complicated.

This thing looks brand new.

That's because it pretty much is in 1993.

Somebody burnt it to the ground.

Well they rebuilt it.

Me too.

I heard a story about this one because of the weight limit.

When school busses would have to cross, they would stop at one side, let all the kids out, drive the bus across the bridge.

The kids would cross the bridge, get back on the bus, and they would drive away.

Must have sucked like the wintertime.

Yeah, like 6:30 in the morning.

All right, kids.

Get off the bus.

I'm just curious.

Do you know why covered bridges are, in fact, covered?

Yeah.

No.

So they're covered because they're made out of wood, and wood will rot in the elements.

The covering serves as a protector for the surface of the bridge, as well as the structure of the bridge.

And they look nice.

All right.

Is that it?

Well, it is a cover bridge.

Wow.

That's short.

Could almost jump over the river.

36 feet.

36 feet.

All right, we got to get a selfie and get out of here, man.

We got to watch too many bridges to hit.

I always wonder where town names come from.

And so, like Langdon, where does that name come from?

I know this one, too.

Seriously.

All right.

What do you got?

I don't know much, but I know that so.

So Langdon is named after John Langdon.

Okay, so he was one of the founding fathers.

All right, that seems fair enough.

I mean, I don't think he lived here, but details.

Details, you know.

This bridge doesn't seem that old.

I think I read that it was 1843 or somethi.

Replicated in 1994.

Why?

It says here it was burned by arson in 1993.

Isn't that the second bridge that was burned in 1993.

Yeah.

The Slate bridge and this one what is wrong people?

Okay.

This thing is amazing.

You could, you could play hockey in here.

I like this bridge.

I do too.

And like check it out.

We could get a little hike in here.

It's probably a lot easier than our last hike.

Definitely a lot easier than our last hike Where's the bridge?

Well, technically, it's not on the road.

Where is it?

I think it's in the woods.

Come on.

What could go wrong.

Wow.

That's cool.

It's like a giant in the woods.

You know what it looks like?

It looks like something you would build out of Lincoln Logs.

I mean, it's not a log cabin, but it's got that feel to it.

It's like a nice Lincoln log railroad covered bridge tunnel.

Thing they went to explore Covered bridges.

Never, ever came home.

Yeah, that was the blacksmith shop.

Next stop almost can't say it.

Next up is Dingleton the Dingleton Hill covered bridge.

It's not that funny, but it is.

It's the Dingelton are you in seventh grade.

I don't know.

Oh, it is funny.

There we go.

That way.

Next up, after the Dingleton is the Cornish Windsor Covered Bridge, the longest one in the U.S..

It was.

Now, there's a slightly longer bridge in Ohio, but this is the longest historic covered bridge in North America.

This bridge is built on 18601866.

So imagine you're sitting here looking at the river, say, you know, I want to build a bridge across that river in 1866.

Yeah.

I mean it's 400 feet.

Another interesting fact on this.

Well, technically, this is the longest bridge in Vermont.

Only about four feet of it is actually in Vermont.

The rest of it is in New Hampshire.

So that's where it should be.

I feel like I'm in somebody's driveway.

Yeah.

It's not Well pull me down.

It's covered bridge.

No, no, sorry.

Totally not sucking in right now.

I'm always sucking in here.

This is.

This is nice.

Like, when they're open like this.

So this is the Edgell covered bridge.

It's pretty cool story.

So it was built by a guy named Walter Piper.

Cool name yeah.

Walter was 18 when he built this bridge.

18.

18.

But not only that, they built it five miles from here.

In the town square and then brought it here by ox.

By by ox.

I don't know what you would do when you're 18, but I was, I wasn't doing anything that impressive.

I certainly wasn't building a bridge so, you know, at one point they didn't allow horses to trot across the bridge.

Hey, why not?

Because they're afraid it was going to, like, shake apart.

How old is it?

190 years old.

I think we're good.

It's kind of getting late, huh?

We got a few more bridges to do.

We better get going.

Think your'e right.

Pictures in the dark.

All right.

I got to be honest, when we started this road trip, I didn't see this coming yeah me either.

This covered bridge was originally constructed in West Montpelier, Vermont.

The Clark family purchased the covered bridge in 1960.

It took them four years to disassemble it.

That's a long way.

Montpelier, Vermont.

To Lincoln in New Hampshire.

Yeah.

You have to really want that covered.

You really, really do.

All right.

No arch looks like a cross truss Now you can see right through the bottom, too.

Yes, you can you say we're in Wolf man territory?

Really concerned about what that means.

As soon as you cross that bridge you are all tresspasers.

Making memories for making memories.

That's.

I did not see this coming.

I just.

Oh, wow.

This is cool.

It's a great road trip.

There's a lot of bridges I'm going to see bridges in my sleep.

I just hope I do sleep.

It's been a while since I went camping.

How bad could it be?

It's going to be a long day tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to that sleeping bag.

Fun fact.

The first long covered bridge in America with a 180 foot center span was built by Timothy Palmer in Massachusetts.

Built right over the river in Philadelphia.

It's not skykull.

Shliyckle no Shoolukull still no Okay.

So shulykill?

Shilykill?

Ah, how do you pronounce it?

Skookle Yeah, that's not Skookle.

Because it's really peaceful here.

Get the giant boulders sticking out of the creek up here.

This bridge actually washed away in the 1890s, but it stayed intact, so they hauled it back into place.

Westbridge just took us over halfway.

Wow.

Only half way?

I was thinking the same thing.

So back in the 1830s, the stretch between here and the Canadian border was the Indian Springs Republic.

For about eight years or so.

They acted as if they were their own republic.

And then they sorted it all out and it became part of Pittsburgh, New Hampshire.

It was almost part of Canada.

The treaty was unclear.

Maybe they just wanted to be free.

Yeah, there we go.

Look, there's a heron.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, that's amazing.

Wow.

Happy Corner Bridge.

Nice.

All right, let's feel happier already.

Me too.

Let's go.

You know these called covered bridges, kissing bridges, It's funny you should mention that, though.

They call this one the honeymoon bridge.

They went a little past kissing then didn't they?

Yeah, it's covered bridge.

It's a gift shop.

Covered bridge.

Gift shop.

Okay, let's go.

There it is.

I still can't believe we up there.

That was pretty fun.

That was The Swift River Bridge during spring storm in the 1800s was washed off its foundations.

Crashes into the Sacco River Bridge, which is right downstream.

Knocks it off its moorings.

Then they took the remnants of the two bridges to build this one.

This is beautiful.

And I know we've seen dozens of these things, but like this one might be top one or two or three.

The scenery is a 12 out of ten.

That's, you're working on that math.

But yeah, it's pretty amazing.

So if I were to ask you, what is the single most important thing that a bridge should do?

What would your answer be?

Cross over something?

I would agree.

I would agree.

Now, I will say that according to the sign up here, they're trying to raise money to refurbish it and move it back into place, which I hope they're able to do.

But right now, it's like a covered bridge in waiting.

I think it would probably argue that it is, in fact, already a cover bridge Well, could it be a bridge if it doesn't cross anything?

Pretty meta question you got going there.

Well, they say it was part of the Underground Railroad freedom seekers coming up through Boston, coming up through New Hampshire and escape into Canada Imagine having to flee your own country to be free after being chased.

The Fugitive Slave Act made it the government's responsibility to track down freedom seekers and bring them back to the South.

Not our best moment at all.

As part of the compromise of 1850 How do you compromise on somebody's freedom, you don't tomorrow morning coming early.

We got a lot of bridges to go.

All right man 17 bridges 12 hours think we can do?

I think so.

I do.

We got a lot of experience in our belt.

Now.

We are covered bridge experts.

No, we are not covered experts.

Going to need some coffee.

Yeah.

All right.

It's no.

Dingleton Bridge, but I'm curious why they call it the Bump Bridge.

Look at this Nancy Bump 1974 Waldo Bump.

Wandalee Bump I guess that's why they call it the Bump Bridge All right, that's cool.

All right.

All right, we got to get outa here.

All right.

Coming up on the Blair Bridge, which had something of a rough life.

It was destroyed by an arsonist.

Who claimed that God told him to do it.

But then Hurricane Irene came to a tropical storm Irene came through and heavily damaged it in 2011 But it reopened again several years later.

You call it Blair Witch Project.

We're here at Blair Bridge just a little scary.

It is.

I think it's haunted don't know about this.

It's just it's really freaking me out.

It's a guy with a camera.

They're following us to their phones, huh?

I'm going to try to hide under the bridge right now.

This is pretty sweet.

It's just a bridge This is nice.

So this is the Smith Millennium Bridge.

It was built in 2001 because the original bridge was burned by an arsonist in 1993.

What you'll recall is the same year that an arsonist burned two other bridges in New Hampshire.

Now, I'm no investigator, but I got to think that there was some relation there.

This bridge got an interesting story, actually.

It was originally in Bedford, New Hampshire.

It was slated for destruction.

The Friends of the Wentworth Parks decided to raise money and have it brought up here.

And placed in this spot.

Squam River Bridge.

That's nice.

Built in 1990 I like how it's arched though.

That's cool.

All right.

We should be building more bridges like that now.

Beautiful.

Cool.

Check this out.

It says here that covered bridges were so popular at one point that some states had over a thousand of them.

Thousand?

Wow.

What happened to them?

Steel.

Sparky!

Yep.

Dude this bridge is too.

Too dangerous to actually go out on it, so I figured I'd go in it.

Okay.

All right.

It doesn't look like a cover bridge to me though when it was built.

It had a covering, but it was not on top.

It was beneath the railroad tracks.

So they called it the upside down, covered So it's covered from underneath?

Well, no, it used to be covered from underneath.

But in 1980, an arsonist burned.

It burned all the sheathing off, which makes it an uncovered, upside down covered bridge.

Seems like there's a lot of asterisks there.

There are, but it's still really cool.

I don't know why you burn a bridge.

Well, I guess people do it every day.

That's true.

That's true.

All right.

So I'm a little confused.

More than normal?

More than usual.

Yeah.

It says Bement bridge Bradford New Hampshire.

1854.

So the problem is, this bridge does not look like it was built in 1854.

There's a reason for that.

Well, last spring, 2021 they took the bridge off its abutments.

Moved it 50 feet downstream and replaced the abutments with granite ones, then moved it back.

And in the process they replaced any of the wood was rotted and needed fixing.

All right.

So this is the Contoocook Railroad Bridge.

It's got a pretty interesting story.

So it is the oldest surviving covered railroad bridge in the world.

But in addition to that, it's been washed off its foundations twice.

Wow.

And it was saved from being washed away by the railroad tracks.

It was just hanging from the tracks, apparently was just hanging.

It was also a warehouse for about 30 years.

The actual bridge was a warehouse.

Only three bridges left But three more to go.

It's getting late, though.

I think we can do it.

I think we can.

But that sun's getting awfully low in the sky.

2 left.

But it is getting dark we can it, though.

I think so, too.

All right.

We got one bridge left.

One bridge.

As long as the light holds up.

I think will make the time.

I do.

I'm an optimist.

I think.

I think we got it.

But everybody uses the word epic these days.

Yeah, that was epic.

It was.

I mean, we pretty much aside from maybe the Seacoast.

Yeah.

Toured the entire state.

We did.

It's a great state.

It is.

There it is.

Oh, sweet.

The last one.

The Hancock Greenfield Covered Bridge.

There we go.

Here we go.

We have band playing or something.

Hit it 56 bridges dude its a lot.

That is a lot.

One road trip.

It's been a lot of fun.

Yeah.

Ever ridden a snowmobile?

No.

Why?

Just wondering when you just wonder things go in interesting directions.

I will say this, though, it's a lot shorter.

Walk back to the car this time any bears out here?

Mostly through this rubber duck.

They built new granite motorcycles.

I could.

I can't say it.

I tried to say it with a straight face.

I can't do it.

Oh, my God, Ethan.

Some say some level.

All right.

Take two.

You saw me standing alone.

Go pro.

Stop.