WALPOLE, N.H. (AP) – Virginia Putnam’s seen it thousands of times on her trips in and out of Walpole’s village.

The double-stone arch bridge on Route 123 has carried her across the Cold River for 55 years. But the structure, which has hovered over the river since 1907, could not survive the raging waters during October’s floods.

“I’ve always remembered seeing it,” said Putnam, who’s also historian of the Walpole Historical Society. “It’s a sad thing.”

The bridge is scheduled to be demolished sometime in December, said James Moore, the state Department of Transportation’s director of project development, two years shy of its 100th birthday.

“The Walpole arch (bridge) was destroyed beyond saving,” Moore said. “I don’t know if there’s anything they can salvage there or not.”

The verdict’s still out on another stone-arch bridge in Stoddard, which also sustained heavy damage during the flood.

The state’s department of transportation and division of historical resources will have to figure that out, said James L. Garvin, the state’s architectural historian.

And sooner rather than later, he said: The most immediate concern is how the 153-year-old historically significant structure will survive winter.

Stone arch bridges have a storied past in New Hampshire, Garvin said, adding that the state has the finest collection of “dry mason” bridges in New England and possibly the country.

Dry mason bridges don’t have mortar to keep the pieces together. Rather, stonemasons cut the stones to fit perfectly together.

Stonemasons in Hillsboro and Henniker built the first such bridges in the 1800s, Garvin said, and the trend trickled to Keene and other areas of the Monadnock Region.

Walpole’s stone-arch bridge is one of the newer ones, Garvin said, so its builders used concrete, not the older dry mason technique.

That particular bridge replaced a series of wooden, covered bridges that kept burning, Putnam said.

After the last covered bridge went down in a blaze in 1907, Walpole held a special town meeting, according to the latest history of the town, published in 1963.

The selectmen and a special committee decided to go with a stone-arch bridge, and a $4,000 bid by J.O. Follett won the project.

The bridge was built by Arthur W. Dean, Garvin said, the state department of transportation’s first state highway engineer.

Construction was expected to take 90 days, the town’s history said, but heavy rains and high waters ripped some stones off the bridge and carried away wooden supports.

It wasn’t until January 1908 that the bridge, featuring two 19-foot-long arches, was complete.

Later, in 1929, two concrete arches were constructed and the bridge was widened to handle increasing Route 12 traffic.

It did so until 1958, when another bridge was built and the stone-arch carried more local traffic on Route 123, the history said.

Then, last month, the floodwaters crumbled the asphalt and pummeled the bridge, making it appear as if a sledgehammer had thwacked the structure right through its middle.

A decision on a new crossing and where it may be built has yet to be made. But, Moore said, a preservation group has requested that any stones be salvaged and left on the bank.

“I don’t think well see a replica,” Garvin said, noting that the transportation department would likely consider a bridge that could better handle a flood of October’s caliber.

If many Stoddard residents had their way in 1852, the stone-arch bridge on Route 9 would never have been constructed.

During town meeting that year, selectmen wanted to build a stone bridge with town funds, but residents objected because its design was extravagant and a waste of money, according to the Historical Society of Cheshire County’s Web site.

The bridge plan made it, but the three selectmen did not; none were re-elected the following year.

The stone-arch bridge has outlasted them all, Garvin said, highlighted by its unique dry mason construction, he said.

The bridge’s architects aren’t known, said Alan F. Rumrill, executive director of the Historical Society of Cheshire County. It’s likely the bridge was built by a Hillsboro family who constructed several similar bridges in that town.

The bridge carried traffic over the North Branch River until the 1940s, Garvin said, when a major road took the load.

Then, in October, the waters scraped the arches undersides and eventually poured over the bridge, sandwiching it.

Historically, Garvin said, floodwaters do more damage to the non-impacted side of the bridge as the flood of 1936 did to several other stone arch bridges in the state. The water “plucks the stones from the downstream side,” Garvin said, which is just what happened to the Stoddard bridge.

One of the arches is missing several stones, and the section that joins the arches appears gouged and worn away.

The state’s transportation department is trying to take care of bridges that are carrying traffic before it gets to other projects, Moore said.

“We know it’s damaged,” Moore said. “It’s a historical resource and want to take care of it. As far as what were going to do, it’s still being discussed.”

But waiting too much longer could mean trouble.

With so much water in the ground, a spring thaw could mean more flooding in the state, Garvin said. And with further freezing and thawing or flooding, more stones could loosen and drop into river during the winter.

So Garvin has gathered pre-flood photographs of the bridge in hopes that the state might get skilled stonemasons together to rebuild the bridge, or at least to build a wooden structure to support the stones until that happens.

Garvin, for one, hopes some action is in the cards.

The bridge, which is identified with a state historical marker, is “very picturesque” and “much appreciated” by passers-by on Route 9, Garvin said. It’s also been photographed in several tourist magazines.

“Townspeople look to it as a landmark,” Rumrill said. “There are not many in Stoddard or in the region. It’s a source of pride.”