So What are the 54?

If you live in New England, you’ve seen one, the iconic covered bridge. They were built for practical reasons, an uncovered wooden bridge has a lifespan of about 20 years, a covered bridge can last for 100. I guess there were over 100,000 at the peak in the United States but now there are only about 750. [citation needed] But one cannot deny the charm of a rustic covered bridge over a quiet stream or a roaring waterfall.

So are there only 54 in New Hampshire? There are many lists about, but many are on private property and many aren’t historic, that’s when we just decide to trust the government! New Hampshire has numbered them, and they range from #1 in Winchester to #67 in Lebanon. Uh, yeah, 54 bridges numbered from 1 to 67.

The next step is tedious. I have that list of NH Bridges but that isn’t good enough for reverse geocoding. I also found The Covered Bridges of New Hampshire geocache, which gives the latitude and longitude of the bridges. I need to get a good data set which has address that I can put into google maps so I can look them up. The geocache pages has latitude and longitude but that won’t help me in the field, probably, when trying to punch the coordinates into the Subaru’s navigation system. (And why not use Apple Maps or Google maps then? Odds are pretty good that many of these bridges are in areas without cell coverage.)

This process is known as data cleaning and it is boring. I’ve created a spreadsheet so I can wrangle my data in the future. I’m copy/pasting the names in. Then I’m looking up the bridge number on the NH site. Then I’m pasting the latitude and longitude into google maps. Then you X out of it, and right click near the bridge. This almost always gives you a street address. I’m about to start my second glass of wine BTW…

After that is done, you double check by pasting all the addresses into google maps. And since you’re there, you might as well use satellite and street view and make notes about parking. The neat thing is that this brought me down memory lane, I’ve been to some of the years ago!

If you want the data, just head over to my GitHub repository.