Bailey Island Bridge
bridge in United States of America
The Bailey Island Bridge (also called the Cribstone Bridge) is a historic bridge in the town of Harpswell within Cumberland County in the state of Maine.
History
For many years, the residents of Bailey Island, Maine, advocated that a bridge be built to connect their island with Orr's Island. The town of Harpswell, Maine, which encompasses both islands, turned down the request. However, when the Maine Legislature drafted a law allowing the state and counties to fund bridge construction, a plan emerged to build such a bridge. A contract was signed in 1926, with construction beginning on the Bailey Island Bridge in 1927 and finishing in 1928. The engineer for the project was Llewelyn N. Edwards, bridge engineer for the Maine State Highway Commission.
Design
Design of the 1,150-foot-long (350 m) bridge was complicated by the tides in the area known as Will's Gut. It was decided to build a cobwork bridge, using granite slabs as cribstones, acquired from local quarries in nearby Yarmouth, Maine. The slabs allowed the tide to ebb and flow freely without increasing tidal current to any great degree.
Some 10,000 tons of granite were used in the project.
The public source identifies “Bailey Island Bridge” as bridge in United States of America. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bailey, Island and Bridge.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4848367. Authority coordinates are 43.749, -69.989. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 1927 and 1928.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bailey Island Bridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.