The small one-lane bridge spanning Nequasset Brook that Woolwich voters will consider discontinuing at next month’s annual town meeting is at least the second one at this location adjacent to the dam.

The townspeople footed the bill when the bridge was built in 1964 but the decision to do so wasn’t without controversy. Documentation on file at the town office reveals after the townspeople voted to discontinue the bridge in 1958, a petition soon followed that led to votes overturning the earlier decision at a special town meeting.

A few years later, monies were raised to shore up the bridge. During this work, the span partially collapsed sending a front end loader crashing into the brook. According to a story from The Bath Daily Times from September 1964, three men were welding framework beneath the bridge when the structure gave way under the load of the eight-ton tractor.

The article headlined, “Tractor Plunges Through Bridge at Nequasset” stated no one was seriously hurt in the mishap but two workers were thrown into the brook and had to swim ashore. Woolwich contractor Lloyd E. Shaw, along with his father, Harold R. Shaw, were carrying out the repairs. Also on the scene during the accident was Road Commissioner Harold F. Hunt who suffered minor head and knee injuries when he was struck by falling planks.

The article states the men were using the front end loader to hold up a section of loose framework when without warning the span gave way. A crane was later used to lift the tractor out of the brook. 

At the time, one family lived on the road served by the bridge that’s referred to in the article as being on the “Town Landing Road.” 

Following the accident, monies were raised to replace the bridge with the one that’s there now. 

Woolwich Road Commissioner Jack Shaw remembers seeing the bridge after it collapsed. “It was kind of scary; the big concern was that somebody could have been seriously hurt or even killed. Harold Shaw was my grandfather and Lloyd Shaw was my uncle,” he said.

Jack A. Shaw and Sons Construction of Woolwich provided the Wiscasset Newspaper with a copy of the newspaper article detailing the accident.