‘Famous’ West Montrose bridge set to undergo repairs later this fall
Posted Sep 26, 2019 11:00:00 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Construction is expected to get underway this fall to repair a covered bridge in West Montrose.
The bridge sustained some damage earlier this month.
“We had a overloaded vehicle go across the bridge, it cracked through the floor beams. The bridge has been closed temporarily. We had an engineer take a look at it, and have closed it to vehicular traffic, but an engineer has determined that it can take a pedestrian load,” said Mike Henderson, Manager of Program Development in Transportation at the Region of Waterloo.
He said the repairs will likely take place in November and will take a few weeks.
That means the bridge will be fully closed to the public.
“There were two cracked floor beams, so we will swap those out, put new beams in and have an engineer review it again, and then hopefully open it.”
Also known as the 'Kissing Bridge', it was built back in 1881. It is the only wooden covered bridge in Ontario, and the oldest of its kind in Canada. It was also featured in the 2017 film 'It' – based on Stephen's King novel.
“We are going about a design that will be sensitive the hertitage needs of this structure, trying to retain all the heritage aspects of this structure, and of course reinstate it to a proper structural capacity,” said Henderson.
Henderson said a large scale rehabiliation is in the works, with design work expected for next year.
