Horse and Buggy Passing Through Covered Bridge, 1960s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Horse and Buggy Passing Through Covered Bridge, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

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Horse and Buggy Passing Through Covered Bridge, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1960–1969

AA-2026-80B403

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The horse comes through the covered bridge at its own pace, which was the entire point of covered bridges and the entire problem with them once automobiles existed. Someone driving a car through in 1965 had to accept that a family in a buggy had the right of way, the bridge deck, and no particular interest in anyone's schedule.

On the shoulder a girl in a plaid skirt and knee socks watches the animal go by with the frank, unblinking interest of a child encountering a horsepower she has not previously priced against a station wagon. She has clearly been brought here on purpose, the covered bridge and its traffic being exactly the kind of vanishing rural curiosity that a family outing was organised around in that decade. Nobody in the buggy looks back; they have somewhere to be and this is simply how you got there.

The scene reads as an accidental documentary of two Americas passing each other on the same plank road, one running on oats and one on petrol, with only the girl's saddle shoes marking which decade actually owns the picture.

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