An Elephant’s Tale

Master raconteur Ed Rondthaler of Croton responded to the back-page image, “High Bridge Over the Croton” by Benson Lossing, 1866, in the Spring newsletter (no. 29). The covered bridge spanned the river’s gorge until its collapse, possibly in the late 1890s. Ed says: “This is the way I heard the story. The circus was moving from Albany to New York, and when they came to the bridge the big elephants were in the lead and the biggest one looked at the bridge, shook his head, and refused to go over. So all the elephants went down and crossed the river at the shallows at the Van Cortlandt ferry house. The bridge collapsed that night.”

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