[3] Due to industrial and transportation expansion, residential needs in the Bellows Falls and Walpole area expanded in the late 1800s.

The two towns established an agreement whereby maintenance costs would be shouldered two-thirds by Walpole and one-third by Rockingham.

[1] Design restrictions included the objection by the Bellows Falls Canal Company to any abutments obstructing the river near their canal,[1] as well as the river bed conditions in the area, which are roughly 25 feet (7.6 m) deep, with no firm location for a pier.

Since it wished to eliminate pedestrians from its bridge, the railroad complied by providing a company engineer as an advisor.

[3] The final design was defined by Worcester as a 540-foot (160 m)-long three-hinged arch with a suspended roadway, plus a 104-foot-8-inch (31.90 m) bowstring truss over the railroad on the Vermont side.

[3] Using falsework made of spruce, later recycled by the local paper mills, construction started in November 1904.

Assembly of the main superstructure began in December 1904, from prefabricated sections by Louis A. Shoemaker and Company (Philadelphia).

A rivalry formed between the two crews, likely making the assembly go faster, as the trusses were connected on January 10, 1905, after twenty-eight working days.

In 1971, the State of New Hampshire closed the whole bridge to vehicular traffic due to concerns about its condition.

[citation needed] The bridge was ultimately felled by use of a cutting torch on the New Hampshire side.

Due to the at-grade rail crossing on the New Hampshire side of the bridge, traffic can sometimes take as much as 20 minutes to get across.