Recent regular readers may know that I am a new friend of the Frank J. Wood bridge.
Gird your steel loins, this is about his final bow, his swinging swan song. All winter each of his many torso parts have been carried away by a Godzilla-size crane. (More elegant than Godzilla but just as impressive.) The humans were always small in comparison to Frank, but they were many –many to imagine and build (1932) and many to take him down (May 2026).
I’m surprised that as I write I’m actually feeling teary. I’ve only known him for 6 months. Maybe my unexpected emotion is due to understanding right from the start that I’d see his historic coming down.
Here he is on Sunday, Mother’s Day 2026.
On Monday, he’ll lose his last set of wings.
Frank brought out the fire in us. Some people are still angry about losing a 2-year fight with the Maine State Department of Transportation to let him stand. Any comment thread that involves Frank still includes a rant (or two) about the horrible travesty of destroying this history.
He was born by the combustion miracle in 1932 and that’s how we brought him down. Over and over, a human guided a blow torch and other humans guided the crane.
Beyond the veil of fire, the young Pejepscot Bridge handles all traffic.
Frank’s feet will be the last to go. They’ve been in the mighty Androscoggin River for 94 years. As part of my the Frank J. Wood watching, I learned that steel rots from the inside out. There has to be something fancy with bridge feet design to handle that moving water decade after decade. I don’t know how he stood for so long but he did.
I spoke with a foreman who told me that he had to quickly dismiss the crew early one day. After they took a part down (on the Brunswick side) he kept hearing loud booms like a big truck was going over the bridge. It was the sound of rust settling. It was a very real possibility that our hero bridge would have crashed down into the river over night. (It didn’t and we were spared.)
I haven’t told you but locals know that our now-gone bridge was also called ‘the green bridge.’ The ‘Statue of Liberty green’ became the nationally adopted color for trestle bridges across America.
May 11 2026– Crew lunch break, last of the green bridge and crane chains waiting for the next step.
Post Script
- Here is a nice spot to land for a complete photo documentation of the demolition.
- Some beams were preserved for an art installation. Specifics are to be determined. Stay tuned.
- A request to Reed & Reed: I’d love to see a big group picture of all the crew that built the new Pejepscot and dismantled the Frank J. Wood bridges.
An improv moment–I was across the river in a parking lot and they were on the work-site temporary bridge. They tried to get out of my shot but we used hand-motions to communicate.
In a hurry, I’m embarrassed that I couldn’t get a better, in-focus photo. But that’s how the best brainstorms roll: spontaneous co-creating, sometimes messy, and always worth the effort to come together.
Love the welding photo!!
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Thank you @kathleen..UNwelding tho’ blow torching to cut the steel.