Rehabilitation of the Rocks Village Bridge

The Rocks Village Bridge is an historic 6-span truss bridge carrying Main Street over the Merrimack River at Haverhill and West Newbury, Massachusetts. It contains the oldest movable bridge in MassDOT's inventory and contains the only remaining manually-operated swing span in the state. Nearly every span of this truss bridge has a unique framing style or span arrangement. The spans were constructed over three different periods beginning in 1883. The 1883 spans, namely the rim-bearing swing span and adjacent west approach span, were built by the Boston Bridge Works. This is one of the earliest known surviving works of this nationally-significant bridge-building firm from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The bridge also contains one of the earliest riveted metal trusses identified in the state. The entire bridge is a contributing structure to the National Register listed Rocks Village Historic District (National Park Service, 1976)