09/05/2026
🌉 HIDDEN HISTORY: THE BRIGHTMAN STREET BRIDGE
You’ve probably driven over it more times than you could ever count.
And now it just sits there.
The old Brightman Street Bridge between Fall River and Somerset carried generations of people across the Taunton River. But the history of this crossing actually goes back WAY before the bridge.
Ferries operated around this spot going all the way back to 1678.
Then came the Brightman Street Bridge.
Built in 1907–1908 and opened full-time in October 1908, the four-lane drawbridge became one of the main connections between Fall River and Somerset.
For more than 100 years, this thing WORKED.
People went to work over it.
Families crossed it every day.
Routes 6 and 138 ran across it.
And toward the end of its life, roughly 45,000 vehicles a day were using it.
Of course, anyone who remembers driving it also remembers this part...
THE DRAWBRIDGE. 😂
A boat needed to get through, the bridge went up, traffic stopped and everybody waited.
Eventually Fall River and Somerset needed something bigger.
But replacing it became a story all by itself.
Plans for a new bridge stretched back decades. There were delays, funding issues, design changes and construction problems before the Veterans Memorial Bridge finally opened in 2011.
The old Brightman Street Bridge closed to regular vehicle traffic on October 11, 2011.
You'd think that would be the end of the story.
Nope.
More than a decade later, the old bridge is STILL sitting there.
And here's one of the stranger chapters...
During the battle over the proposed LNG terminal at Weaver's Cove, the old bridge became important because its limited clearance created an obstacle for large LNG tankers traveling farther up the Taunton River.
Federal legislation in 2006 actually prohibited demolition of the bridge.
Think about that for a second.
A bridge originally built to help traffic CROSS the river later became important because of the traffic people DIDN'T want traveling UP the river.
You can't make this stuff up. 😂
The LNG project eventually went away.
The bridge didn't.
Today the old Brightman Street Bridge still sits beside the Veterans Memorial Bridge, no longer carrying the thousands of cars it once did, but still very much part of the Fall River waterfront.
And if you've lived around here long enough, chances are you've got a Brightman Street Bridge story.
Getting stuck waiting for it to close?
Crossing it every day for work?
Remember when the new bridge seemed like it was NEVER going to be finished? 😂
Let's hear it.
Because before it became that old bridge sitting in the river...
It connected Fall River and Somerset for more than a century.
