In front of you is the Frontier Bridge, a magnificent, covered bridge built in 1896. It spans Mud Creek at a height of over 10 metres (or 33 feet), making it one of the highest covered bridges in Quebec. Of the five covered bridges that once existed in Potton Township, the Frontier covered bridge is the only one left standing. It has fallen into disrepair, like its predecessors, although there is little chance it will be washed away by floods!
This type of covered structure extends the life of a wooden bridge by protecting it from the elements. These bridges appeared in the United States around 1805 and in Quebec around 1850. Of the 1000 bridges built until 1958 in the province, only 82 remain today.
The Frontier Bridge borrows a style developed by the American Ithiel Town, an architect and civil engineer. Strong and comparatively light, a Town Bridge can support spans of 67 meters (or approximately 220 feet) The Frontier Bridge measures 31 metres (or 101 feet). Most of the covered bridges built in Quebec in the 19th century were built using the Town technique that incorporated the use of large trusses composed of an upper and a lower chord connected by sturdy diagonals made of thick planks 3 to 4 meters long. These trusses form the side walls of the bridge and appear as a long lattice. The technique required commonly available material and could be efficiently built by comparatively unskilled labour; hence its popularity.
Although the Town technique facilitates their construction, covered bridges remain complex structures that require arduous and often perilous work from their builders. If you walk up to the bridge railing and look down into the gorge, you can imagine the dangers inherent in building such a structure over 125 years ago.
In the late 1960s, the Department of Transportation deemed the covered bridge obsolete and announced a new bridge would replace it. The proposed demolition was strongly opposed by Potton citizens, including then Mayor Fred Korman. By 1975, the old bridge had been decommissioned, moved a few feet east to temporary supporting cribbing and was thereby saved. The bridge is now protected under a heritage citation but nonetheless, in need of serious repair.
The Canada-US border crossing beyond the Pont de la Frontière Road was closed in the 1970s. Before then, crossings from one country to another, using one of the four ports of entry available, were frequent and much easier than today. Today, there is only one border crossing left in Potton, that of Highwater and, seasonally, on Lake Memphremagog.
A little-known fact is that this border, which was supposed to follow the 45th parallel according to the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, was actually improperly surveyed by American surveyors. The 45th parallel is actually about one kilometer south of the present border. Therefore, a simple surveying error caused Canada to lose several thousand square kilometers of territory to the United States. It was rumoured that the surveyors had celebrated the night before this measurement was taken!!