Dear Mr. History Person,
[Recently] on the radio, people were talking about the old Coggeshall Street Bridge that was replaced in the early 1960s. The question came up about whether or not the old bridge was a drawbridge that opened. No one could answer. How about you?
—R.L., Fairhaven
There wouldn’t be a whole lot of folks around who remember if it opened or closed, because it stopped doing that seventy-one years ago.
The old Coggeshall Street Bridge did have a draw to allow passage for larger vessels to access factories to the north. Damage from the Hurricane of 1938 put an end to the opening and closing of the bridge. Further damage from Hurricane Carol in 1954 stopped buses and large trucks from crossing the bridge. In 1962 a causeway, officially named the Arthur J. Mullen Bridge, replaced the old bridge. For a time the old bridge and the new causeway (which is still informally referred to as the Coggeshall Street Bridge) stood side by side.
