It Happened in Hillsborough: The Runaway Bridge

How many covered bridges were there in Hillsborough in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries? Many of you
know about the covered bridge that spanned the South Branch of the Raritan River where the
Studdiford Road Bridge is today. That bridge served travelers for nearly a century, from 1830 to 1929.
Some of you may have heard about the covered bridge at the end of South Bridge Street that crossed
the Raritan and connected Hillsborough to Somerville from 1822 to 1886. And a third was located where
Montgomery Road crosses the Neshanic River. But this is a trick question, because, for a short while in
1921, Hillsborough possessed a fourth covered bridge!

The Runaway Bridge

The evening of July 19, 1921, was a rough one for Somerset County, NJ bridges. Fierce thunderstorms
and ensuing floods of the Raritan and Millstone Rivers destroyed at least five, including several in
Hillsborough, as floodwaters approached record levels.

Barely escaping, but much damaged, was the old covered bridge that spanned the Neshanic River on
Montgomery-Blackpoint Road in the Montgomery section of Hillsborough Township. That bridge was
built in 1832 on the site of an earlier bridge and a mill that had existed since before the American
Revolution.

The damage to the venerable old bridge wasn’t caused directly by the raging Neshanic but rather by
another bridge!

Two miles upstream in East Amwell Township, stood a fourth covered bridge. It carried Rainbow Hill
Road over the Neshanic River. Newspapers reported that the single-span bridge, which they were
assured was over 100 years old, was ripped from its moorings and sent careening two miles downstream
to the Montgomery Bridge.

As was reported two days later in The Courier News:
“There the wreckage jammed up against the piers and sides of the bridge, which is considerably
damaged and warped by the pressure from the Hunterdon County structure.”

The wrecked bridge was removed, and the Montgomery Bridge was repaired and put back into service
for seven more years before being replaced in 1928.

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Gregory Gillette has been writing about local history for 20 years, starting with his Courier News column
“Gillette on Hillsborough” and continuing today with a Facebook page of the same name. A recipient of

the Somerset County Cultural and Heritage Commission History Award for Education/Leadership in
2018, he was named as Hillsborough’s first Local Historian in 2025.