The Barn Yard Covered Bridge

Need a Fancy Barn? They’ve Got You Covered.
The Barnyard Covered Bridge, Ellington
December 2023 & September 2026

Look just above this sentence and you’ll see I visited this bridge twice. Why? I have no idea. But here we are.

Actually, I will sheepishly admit that I know exactly why: I forgot about my 2023 visit when I planned to swing by in 2026. However, the second I pulled into the rather unique circular parking lot here I knew I had been here before.

But you know what? This is a way cooler covered bridge than you think it is and it’s not the worst thing to visit twice. In short, it was built working from a two-century-old design by Connecticut native Ithiel Town. Quick Connecticut covered bridge trivia: Where is the bridge called the Ithiel Town Bridge?

In Hamden at the Eli Whitney Museum! (Sort of a trick question because that bridge is actually called the A. Frederick Oberlin Bridge, but is also the Ithiel Town Bridge, but I’m sure you knew that.)

To better understand why this bridge exists, we must understand a bit about The Barn Yard. Their mission is “to build quality structures while providing an unmatched customer experience and preserving the values that founded The Barn Yard in 1984.”

1984 is younger than pretty much every one of you reading this page. But here’s the thing: these guys build supremely high quality barns and structures that mix modern technology and old school carpentry. Y’know, the stuff that lasts forever. It’s like if the Amish had computers to help model and precisely cut large timber.

Yes, they employ authentic mortise & tenon joinery to create stronger frames. They craft true post & beam barns, from the timber sill all the way up to the peak of the heavy timber roof rafters. They sell all sorts of things, from pre-made ADU’s to sheds to, basically, entire house additions, barns, and “barns” that can be used for whatever you want.

But let’s talk about this bridge which, really, is just a showpiece. You can even bring a picnic lunch to sit and look at the thing if you want. While not a public road, this thing could probably support a fully loaded tractor trailer.

It is a Town Lattice Truss covered bridge.

And it does serve a purpose at the business. When they bought the adjoining property, they needed to connect the two over Belding Brook. The Skinner brothers, who now ran the business after their father and grandfather, “always wanted to build a covered bridge,” so… they did.

All this background information is from New England which is the online version of Yankee Magazine.

Building a traditional covered bridge is a complicated project, and this one was about a year in the works. “The bridge project created an opportunity to show our customers the level of quality we’re able to deliver in our custom building projects,” Everett says. “There are qualifications that a covered bridge has to meet to be considered authentic and included on the official register of bridges. Our goal was to make it into the register.”

They settled on a 56-foot span, built according to a design patented by Connecticut-born architect Ithiel Town back in 1820. Called the Town Lattice Truss, it features a series of crossed beams connected by oak pegs and traditional joinery, rather than by nails or screws.

The Douglas fir timbers for the bridge project were shipped in from the West Coast. The company’s shop crew spent a few weeks fabricating and cutting every piece to exact specifications.

“Our facilities here gave us some tremendous advantages over how this work would have been done a century ago,” Everett says. “What our equipment could do in four or five days might have taken four or five months [back then]. There’s a lot less hammer and chisel work.”

Ya think?

They added some cool touches, like reclaimed wood for the exterior siding and granite cobbles from “the streets of Boston” as well. It all works, even if it merely takes people from one part of the commercial business to the other.

A business that appears to be thriving. Heck, I became enamored with an ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) not because I want to “escape” my family and “live” in a private little getaway… at least not consciously.

This is a very nice authentic-ish covered bridge that, in theory, will be here for a couple hundred years. I’ve no idea if the business will last that long and maybe someday this will just be an overgrown field with an awesome covered bridge in the middle of it.

I’ll let CTMQ_AIv4.0 handle that in 2226.

The Barn Yard
CTMQ’s Covered Bridges