Gifford Covered Bridge

Gifford Covered Bridge
Carries	Automobile
Crosses	Second Branch of White River
Locale	Randolph, Vermont
Maintained by	Town of Randolph
ID number	VT-09-03
Characteristics
Design	Covered, King post
Material	Wood
Total length	54.75 ft (16.69 m)
Width	14.8 ft (4.51 m)
Number of spans	1
Load limit	3 tons
Clearance above	10 ft (3.0 m)
History
Constructed by	unknown
Construction end	1904
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Bridge site in U.S. state of Vermont
Coordinates
Area	1 acre (0.4 ha)
NRHP Reference #	74000240
Added to NRHP	July 30, 1974

The Gifford Covered Bridge, also called the C.K. Smith Covered Bridge, is a wooden covered bridge that crosses the Second Branch of the White River in Randolph, Vermont on Hyde Road. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

The bridge is of King post truss design by an unknown builder. This bridge is one of only two covered bridges in Vermont (the other being the nearby Braley Covered Bridge) in which the king-post truss reaches only half the height of the bridge. The reason for this is that the bridge was most likely a wooden boxed pony truss bridge when first built in 1904. The trusses would have most likely been covered by planking to protect them, rather being left open. See the article on Mean's Ford Bridge in Pennsylvania at BridgeHunter.com for an example of this rare type of bridge.

Recent history

Circa 1955 the bridge deck was reinforced with steel I-beams above the roadway which are in turn tied to I-beams below. This being an unusual way of strengthening a covered bridge. In 2001, extensive repairs were made to the bridge, including raising it up from the river to help prevent flood waters from reaching the deck. Despite the repairs, a relatively low weight limit of 3 tons remains on the bridge. There is evidence that the weight limit is forcing heavy vehicles to ford the shallow river next to the bridge.