The Taftsville Covered Bridge is a timber-framed covered bridge that spans the Ottauquechee River in the Taftsville village of Woodstock, Vermont, in the United States. Built-in 1836 and exhibiting no influence from patented bridge designs, it is among the oldest remaining covered bridges both in Vermont and the nation as a whole.
The village of Taftsville was first settled more than 70 years before the construction of the modern Taftsville Bridge. Stephen Taft, after whom the village was ultimately named, arrived in the early 1790s. Within a decade of Taft’s arrival, he and his brother had established a number of mills and the increasingly busy settlement required a bridge over the Ottauquechee River. The first bridge was washed away during a flood in 1807, with its replacement also falling to floodwaters in 1811. When the third bridge at the site was again washed away during an 1828 flood, a distinguished local by the name of Solomon Emmons III was contracted to build a more resilient crossing. His timber-framed, covered bridge was completed in 1836 and still stands today as the modern Taftsville Bridge.