• Courtesy
• Eva Gerstle at a covered bridge

Growing up in western Massachusetts, Eva Gerstle was no stranger to covered bridges. But it wasn't until a Vermont bicycle ride early in the pandemic that she realized how much she loved the structures.

"They're like these little time portals," said Gerstle, 24. "They just transport you back into the 19th century."

That fateful trip in spring 2020 inspired her to begin a four-year journey crisscrossing Vermont to cycle across the state's 94 publicly accessible covered bridges. She created a list of them by cross-referencing online resources. Then she taped a large map of Vermont on her wall and used pushpins to mark the bridges she had — and hadn't — pedaled across. The number seemed to constantly change. The River Road Covered Bridge in Troy, for instance, burned down in February 2021, before Gerstle could traverse it. She was able to cross Lyndon's Sanborn Covered Bridge in June of this year, just two months before officials ordered it dismantled and removed to prevent flood damage.

Gerstle would typically plan multiday journeys to knock off several bridges. During one trip in the Charlotte area, Gerstle finished her day at the Shelburne Museum, which is home to a two-lane covered bridge. But the museum had just closed for the day.

Gerstle hopped the fence and cycled across. She didn't go unnoticed.

"I was escorted off," she said sheepishly.

She completed her trek on August 8 when she crossed the Pulp Mill Bridge near Middlebury. It's the only active two-lane covered bridge in Vermont and, built in 1820, is the state's oldest.

"What I loved about this project is that all of the bridges had some sort of superlative," Gerstle said. "You'd show up and a sign would say, 'This is the longest covered bridge built in the 1830s that doesn't span the Connecticut River!'"

All told, she spent about 23 days in the saddle riding nearly 900 miles. She snapped pictures of herself in goofy poses beside every bridge.

"I love that interplay of history and transportation," Gerstle said. "We get to live in such close connection with a time when we had such different forms of technology and ways of movement. I think it's so beautiful."