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by Gina Hamilton
photos by Tyler Drumm
Coastal Journal staff
 HARPSWELL -- The Bailey Island Bridge connects Orr’s and Bailey Islands. It is also known as the cribstone bridge. The bridge has an interesting history, dating back to the early part of the 20th century.
For years, the residents of Bailey Island advocated that a bridge be built to connect them to Orr’s Island. A bridge had already been built at the other end of Orr’s, connecting it to Great Island and then to the mainland, but the only way to get to Bailey Island was by boat.
Harpswell turned down the request. However, right around the same time, the Maine Legislature was drafting a law that allowed the state and the counties to help fund bridge building, so Harpswell’s objections vanished. A contract was written for the bridge in 1926.
The engineer, Llewelyn Edwards, was a bridge engineer for the Maine State Highway Commission, and right away he realized there was a serious problem with the Bailey Island project. The tides in the region known as Will’s Gut were fairly high, and building a bridge to span the 1150-foot chasm was going to be a tough project. Edwards decided to build a cribstone bridge using granite slabs from Yarmouth and Pownal. Granite was strong enough, Edward reasoned, to withstand both wind and wave action, and by cribbing the bridge - that is, stacking the granite blocks without mortar or metal, and leaving open gaps throughout the structure - the tides would be able to ebb and flow freely without increasing tidal current.
Some 10,000 tons of granite were used for the project, and once completed, a road was laid across the cribstones. It is now part of Highway 24. Later, a sidewalk and guard rails were added. In 1975, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1984, the Bailey Island Bridge was declared a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. It is the only granite cribstone bridge in the world.
Currently, the bridge is undergoing restoration due to cracked and sheered stones. The estimated cost of the renovation is $11 million. Currently, the bridge is closed to traffic; traffic is diverted to a temporary metal bridge that connects the two islands.
The work is ahead of schedule, according to the engineers on the project, and is expected to be completed by 2011. The work is funded in part by a federal earmark of $3 million that was granted in 2005; the state is funding part of the work as well.
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