Scenic Old Village Footbridge To Be Replaced

Neighbors Raise Money For New Structure Over Mill Creek

by Tim Wood

            CHATHAM --- Just about every day during the summer, between 50 and 100 people trek along the path that rings the east side of Little Mill Pond and cross the narrow, picturesque footbridge that spans Mill Creek.  Not only is it a shortcut to downtown from the Old Village neighborhood, but it’s an incredibly beautiful walk.

            The 20-year-old footbridge is tired, however, and residents of the area are being asked to contribute toward its replacement.

            “It’s been extended and stabilized by the neighbors, including me,” said George Olmsted, whose Chase Street property sits just above the wooden bridge.  “We’re at a point where we’re close to beyond repair.”

            Olmsted recently secured permission from the conservation commission to replace the 40-foot-long bridge, in exactly the same spot across the small tidal creek that separates an old cranberry bog from Little Mill Pond.  Cape Cod Docks will build and install the new structure using an environmentally friendly form of pressure treated lumber.

            “There are a lot of people who walk here regularly,” Olmsted said while standing on the bridge last Friday.  As he spoke, a mother and daughter meandered down the shoreline path that begins at the end of Eliphamet’s Lane and ends at the town dock at the foot of Mill Pond Road, crossing the bridge with the sort of cautious step one takes when the structure underfoot has some play to it.

            “A lot of children from the Old Village use this, because it’s safer to get to Main Street,” Olmsted added.  Otherwise, kids would have to walk along winding School Street to reach sidewalks, pointed out.  The path and the bridge are also used by shellfishermen who work the pond.

            “It’s very active down here,” he said. “People would really miss it.”

            According to a letter Olmsted wrote to his neighbors, older residents of the area recall a bridge over the creek going back more than 50 years.  During the 1930s, there was an active cranberry bog east of the bridge; a dike apparently built in the early 1900s to create the bog separated it from the pond. 

            The dike was opened up by the Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project in the 1980s.  The bog has transitioned into a marsh that Olmsted said is “very healthy,” hosting a thick growth of spartina and an abundance of wildlife, including blue heron and ducks.  Mill Creek is a shallow tidal stream that is not navigable, Olmsted said, even though it has a relatively high four-foot tidal range, like the rest of Little Mill Pond. 

            In 1988, Old Village residents paid for a new bridge, which was built by Quido Stello and installed by his son, Bob, according to conservation commission records.  Over the years that bridge, along with a 17-foot wooden walkway, has been extended and extensively repairs, Olmsted said.  It’s been strengthened structurally, but today “there may be more nails and bolts in the structure than wood,” he quipped.  The impracticality of continuing a Band-aid approach led to Olmsted and his neighbor across the bridge, Hayden Griswold, to conclude that the time has come for a new structure.

            The current bridge is made out of pressure-treated lumber, which can leach harmful chemicals, including arsenic, over time.  It’s four to six pilings also extend right into the creek, Olmsted said.  The new structure will be made of ACQ pressure-treated wood, which is arsenic free and approved for residential use.  A new support system design will also move the pilings out of the water and into the banking on either side of the creek.  The new bridge should outlast the current one.

            “It will be here long after I’m gone,” said Olmsted, a former president of the Friends of Chatham Waterways who is active in the Chatham Water Watchers Program.

            Olmsted declined to provide the cost of the new bridge, but said Old Village residents have been asked to help pay for it. An account for the “Footbridge over Mill Creek” has been set up at the Cape Cod Five Cent Savings bank on Main Street to accept donations.

            “We’ve had a lot of contributions,” he said.  He was confident enough money would be raised to cover the cost.  “I suspect we’ll do it before the end of the year.”

9/4/08