Walking across the Kenduskeag Stream footbridge in downtown Bangor is a pretty ordinary thing, whether it’s during the high waters of the spring season, or during the cracking, creaking ice of winter.
But that bridge actually has a long and fascinating history that spans nearly 150 years in Bangor, from the city’s days as a booming lumber town in the 19th century, to its troubled urban renewal era in the mid-20th century, to the current day, when the bridge is part of a growing network of trails and green spaces throughout the area.
The Morse Bridge was originally built in 1873 by the owners of Morse’s Mill, a busy sawmill that was located just upstream, according to Bangor historian Dick Shaw. It was the longest covered bridge in Maine when it was built, and the only covered bridge located in the middle of a city, according to a 1962 New York Times article.
The original bridge only stood for 11 years, until 1884, when a spring flood carried it off its abutments and into the stream. It was quickly rebuilt, and stood there for nearly 80 more years.
Originally, it was meant to carry wagons and horses across the stream, but as the years went by, it also served as a route for farmers to move their livestock to the S.A. Maxfield slaughterhouse, which stood next to Morse’s Mill for decades. Locals reportedly called the bridge the “bridge of sighs” — a reference to a bridge in Venice, Italy by the same name — because of the sounds sheep let out as they made their way to their death.
In his 1986 opus “It,” the book that made a fictional version of the Kenduskeag Stream famous, Stephen King refers to a covered bridge called the “kissing bridge” by locals in Derry, his fictional town based on Bangor. The first half of the book is set in the 1950s, during an era when covered bridges were still plentiful across Maine and New England. Today, only nine covered bridges remain in the state, including the nearby Robyville Bridge in Corinth and Lowes Bridge in Guilford.
In the late 1950s, Morse Bridge was in rough shape. By 1962, it had been disassembled, and its remains sat in a pile along the stream for several years. The state’s transportation authority gave the city $40,000 to reconstruct it, community members raised another $25,000, and in the summer of 1964 it was reassembled about 1,000 feet downstream from its original site.
The effort to save the bridge and rebuild it was one of the reasons why the city sought to turn much of the area along the stream into a public walking trail. The Kenduskeag Stream Trail now runs 2.3 miles from downtown Bangor along the stream, ending near the intersection of Valley and Kenduskeag avenues.
Morse’s Mill, the sawmill that gave the bridge its name, was demolished in 1975, as one of the last acts of the city’s controversial urban renewal project of the 1960s and 70s. Despite the best efforts of some local residents to save it, the mill came down, and in its place the city built a parking lot, though a few remnants of the mill’s foundation can still be seen today.
By 1980, the bridge had once again become rundown — this time, due to extensive vandalism inside the structure, including graffiti, trash and damage to the walls and roof. There were clean-up efforts from time to time, and it played host to a craft show for a few summers in the 1970s, but its condition continued to deteriorate.
Its days were numbered anyway: on March 26, 1983, the bridge was consumed by flames and collapsed into the water. The cause of the fire was later found to be arson. Ten days after the fire, 36-year-old Stanley Albert was arrested, and was found guilty in February 1984.
In 1985, the burned-out bridge was replaced with the steel footbridge that stands there today, in the same spot where the old bridge stood, on the same granite pilings.
Though it has been destroyed by floods and fires, and has been rebuilt three times now, a bridge still crosses the Kenduskeag Stream. Like Bangor itself, it’s been through a lot — but its people keep rebuilding, no matter what gets thrown at it.