Jigsaw for October 24, 2026: The mill and covered bridge at Quechee, about 1930
I sent this photograph to the listservs as a Sunday puzzle in July 2024, before there was a Curioustorian. Here it is in color, with the story of the mill and the bridge.
The car coming out of the bridge dates the picture to about 1930. The bridge was built in 1885, the third on the spot since 1769. The flood of 1927 damaged it, and in 1933 a concrete and steel deck replaced it. The white cloud at the left, in front of the mill, is mist rising off the falls.
The long brick building on the hill is the Quechee Grammar School, which opened in 1921. Its brick is buff, a pale yellow-tan, not the red of the mill. It closed in 1994, when the Ottauquechee School went up in the field behind it, and since 1996 it has been the Upper Valley Waldorf School.
The mill began in 1825 as John Downer's six-story brick building at the falls. In 1840 it became, by the National Register's account, the first mill in the country to make shoddy, cloth from shredded rags and new wool. Joseph C. Parker ran it from 1857 to 1906, making fine baby flannel. His Second Empire house beside the mill is now the Parker House.
Harris, Emery and Company, whose name is on the water tower, bought the mill in 1908, nearly doubled it in 1915, and closed it in 1951. It never reopened. In 1969 the Quechee Lakes Corporation, which was turning Quechee into a resort, bought what was left.
The brick building is the same one. Simon Pearce works in the bottom two floors of the tall brick mill at the left of the 1930 photograph; its upper floors and tower came down in 1964. The long wing beside the bridge came down then too. The gray clapboard building with three dormers in its place is the annex Quechee Lakes built in 1970.
In 1980 Simon Pearce, an Irish glassblower, bought the mill, and he opened his workshop there in 1981. In 1982 he installed a hydroelectric turbine to run the glass furnaces, in the building where water-driven line shafts once turned the looms. The mill also holds the Simon Pearce Restaurant, which looks out over the falls and the bridge and is one of the best regarded in the Upper Valley.
On August 28, 2011, Tropical Storm Irene put the Ottauquechee about 25 feet above normal. The water filled the bottom two floors of the mill and destroyed more than $200,000 worth of glass and a 3,000-bottle wine cellar. It also tore away the village end of the covered bridge. Both were rebuilt, and the bridge reopened at the end of 2012. In July 2023 the river came into the mill again and washed out the bank under the village end of the bridge, which stayed closed for six weeks.
More from the town of Hartford
A word of thanks
To the Hartford Historical Society, which shared the photograph by way of the Norwich Historical Society, and whose newsletter tells the mill's story with many more pictures.
Full-resolution images
The mill and covered bridge, about 1930, in color
The same photograph in black and white
The 1906 Sanborn map of the mill
Jigsaw: the mill and covered bridge at Quechee
Thanks for your support, as always,
Cameron Cross
Sources
Photograph: Hartford Historical Society, via the Norwich Historical Society. Map: Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, White River Junction, October 1906, Library of Congress. Modern photograph: Google Street View, September 2024. Research: Quechee Historic Mill District, National Register nomination, 1997; Hartford Historical Society Newsletter, March-April 2020; Hartford Historical Society Newsletter, September 2009, on the Quechee school; Reuters on Irene a year later; Vermont Business Magazine on the Simon Pearce rebuild; Yankee Magazine on dining at Simon Pearce; Fodor's on Simon Pearce and its restaurant; WCAX on Simon Pearce after the 2023 flood; WCAX on the bridge reopening after the 2023 flood.