Historic Frazier Bridge

The bridge is a double masonry arched bridge with a cast iron rail. The masonry arches on which the load of the bridge is carried can be seen from both ends of the LaChute River Walk Trail.

When D. Kelley surveyed the lower falls in 1822, a bridge was built on or about the site of the Frazier Bridge today. In 1836, B.F. Frazier ran a planing mill on the north side of the river above the falls, and in 1845 the same family opened a cabinet-making shop that was near the existing bridge. The present bridge takes its name from that enterprise.

A March 7, 1874 note in the Ticonderoga Sentinel indicated that the old bridge was becoming dilapidated and that a new bridge was needed. A month later a resolution was passed to build an iron bridge of a Cooper Patent.

Sometime in early 1892, the Cooper Patent iron bridge collapsed and in the May 19, 1892 issue of the Sentinel it was reported “a petition for the highway commission to replace the collapsed iron bridge on North Main with an arched stone structure”. In the August 25, 1894 Sentinel, it was reported “Alex Lee is rushing work on the stone bridge. D.M. Arnold, engineer says the stone work should be completed in about a week.”

Local mill operators continually used the road until 1925 when International Paper Company bought Ticonderoga Pulp and Paper Company. The bridge was used for the next thirty-four years as a public means of transportation until 1959 when IP built Building Number 7 and closed North Main Street from Exchange Street to Burgoyne Road. From 1959 to 1972, the road was used as a footpath for mill workers, but in 1972, International Paper built the present plant on Airport Avenue and began demolition on all of the old mill buildings downtown.

Today, the bridge stands as one of the “few reminders of the water-related manufacturing activities that was once centered at the lower falls on the LaChute River.”