Holmes Creek Covered Bridge, Charlotte, Vermont
Holmes Creek Charlotte
(a/k/a Lakeshore)
Leonard Sherman, c1870
Kingpost Tied Arch, 41′, spanning Holmes Creek on Lake Road.
Purported to be the shortest covered highway bridge in use in New England; at 112′ above sea level, it is the lowest altitude covered bridge in Vermont. When the town’s Select Board approved the bridge, it was specified to allow passage of “a load of hay, high and wide.”
In the late 1800s, the Holmes family, for whom the creek and thus the bridge were named, operated what was supposedly to be the largest apple orchard in New England, shipping apples to distant places. Just offshore in the waters of Lake Champlain there are still submerged pilings of the pier where boats would tie up to load the fruit.
