Motorists who rely on Old Stage Road to avoid Route One traffic snarls will be out of luck over the summer while a two-lane wooden bridge spanning Monstweag Brook is replaced. Work will start in early July and is expected to be completed after Labor Day.

“The preliminary schedule from the contractor has the road closure and detour scheduled to start on July 8 and completed by Sept. 19,” according to Devan Eaton, senior project manager for Maine Department of Transportation’s bridge program. Eaton’s April 23 email to Wiscasset Newspaper stated the contractor has 90 days to close the road, and must have it reopened by Oct. 19. Several months ago, MaineDOT awarded the contract to T Buck Construction of Turner to remove and replace the 33-year-old bridge for $793,913.

The upper half of Montsweag Brook, where the small bridge is, is a mostly wooded area serving as a boundary line between Wiscasset and Woolwich and also Sagadahoc and Lincoln counties. The detour around the two-lane bridge is roughly 7.8 miles. On the Wiscasset side, it will begin at the junction of Old Stage and Old Bath roads with motorists being re-routed on Old Bath Road to Route One. On the Woolwich side, motorists will be diverted to Mountain Road.

Plans for replacing the bridge have been in the works for more than seven years after a state inspection revealed extensive rust and corrosion of its steel support beams along with wear and tear to the bridge’s wooden pressure-treated decking and railings. The result was MaineDOT posting the bridge to a 25-ton limit in January 2017.

Wiscasset and Woolwich officials were initially considering splitting the costs of replacing the bridge when they were relieved to learn the state would foot the bill. The current bridge was built for $100,000 in 1991 by Woolwich contractor Jack Shaw and Sons Construction and entirely paid for by Wiscasset. It replaced a similar wooded bridge here built in 1954.

The current bridge has held up pretty well over the years considering it’s gotten increasingly more use from motorists; more so, since work began on the replacement of Station 46 and Pleasant Cove bridges near Taste of Maine Restaurant and that is expected to be completed in 2025.

The new Old Stage Road bridge will be about three feet longer than the present one to eliminate open joints at either end. It will be a little wider as well – 20 feet between the curbing allowing 10 feet for each travel lane. Eaton added it will have a concrete deck slightly crowned at the center and steel guard railing. “This will improve the overall safety of the structure, even with the existing width maintained. The existing abutments will be slightly modified and reused so the overall bridge geometry doesn’t change much,” he stated. 

Other work is planned to the bridge approaches including reconstruction of the road shoulders to allow for the installation of guardrail.