Ledyard Bridge Challenge
When participating in the Ledyard Bridge Challenge, a person or, more commonly, a group must go down to the bank of the Connecticut River, remove their clothing, and swim across to the Vermont side of the river bank. Once this is done, the participant or group of participants must run back across Ledyard Bridge, which connects the New Hampshire and Vermont banks of the Connecticut River, and dress themselves without being caught by the Hanover Police.
Folklore Type: Customary
Ledyard Bridge Challenge Stories
May 30, 2016
Informant’s Comments:
“It was my Sophomore Summer, and there was only about a week left, so a couple of my friends decided to meet up with a couple of girls and go do the Ledyard Bridge Challenge. My friends and the group of girls we were with had been at the House drinking and pre-gaming getting ready for Ledyard Bridge. After everyone was at the point of feeling loose, we all headed down to the Connecticut River. As we started to strip, the Hanover Police came. We all made a dash for the river and jumped in. My close friend and I made it across to the Vermont River bank. My other friend managed to escape from the cops with the girls. My friend and I ran across the Ledyard Bridge, grabbed our clothes, and went to the House to hide. We thought we were in the clear until the Hanover Police came knocking on our door. We had to turn ourselves into the Hanover Police because our fourth friend was missing; we mistakenly thought he got away. We went with the police to the site where we jumped in. We couldn’t find him, and the police couldn’t find him either. Fire trucks and dive teams were called in as they started searching for him in the Connecticut River. As morning approached, and the search was wrapping up we found our friend passed out in the bushes next to many cop cars. Over $10,000 was spent looking for my friend, and the whole time he was passed out in the bushes.”
Informant’s Comments:
“I was doing the Ledyard Challenge my freshman year. As I was running back across the bridge, HPO started chasing me. Luckily, I didn’t have my wallet with my clothes. So, I booked it all the way back to my dorm at the Choates. As soon as I got back I locked my room and turned the lights out. I was never caught.”
“I heard about the challenge before I attended Dartmouth, on my recruiting visit. All of the stories I heard made me afraid of the challenge because almost everybody got caught. I finally built up enough confidence after two years on campus, and set off for the challenge on a warm spring night. I mentally prepared myself, in case I got caught, but I luckily ended up completing the challenge with no sign of SNS or HPO. I consider myself very lucky.”
Informant’s Comments:
“I came to campus in September excited to participate in all that Dartmouth offered. I heard of the Ledyard Bridge Challenge from an upperclassman in the first month of school. On the same day that I was told about it, I decided to complete it. Unfortunately, I always had poor circulation in my body, and that week happen to be very chilly. The water was very cold when I got in and as I swam, my body tensed up. HPO was at the scene waiting for me to return to the New Hampshire side. At one point during my swim, I started screaming because my body got so cold, to the point where I could no longer swim. One of the HPO officers, saw the severity of the situation and dove in to help me. He passed me a life jacket (some HPO officers keep them for these situations) and helped me to land. I was very embarrassed, thanked the officer and apologized. The officer let me off with a warning and took me to Dick’s House for the night.”
“I did the Ledyard Challenge with my girlfriend at the time. It was in the spring of my Junior year. We made it across the river, and as we were running back, HPO showed up. One officer got out of the car and started chasing us. We reached our clothes, grabbed them, and continued running. The officer caught my girlfriend, but I continued running and did not get caught. My girl was already upset at me due to a past instance and this put her over the edge. She broke up with me the next morning.”
Informant’s Comments:
“My sorority sisters and I decided to do the Ledyard Bridge. We stripped and jumped in. We made it to the other side without being caught. We ran across the bridge unnoticed again. When we got to the area where our clothes were supposed to be, we couldn’t find them. We spent half an hour looking for them. We then had to call for another one of our sister’s to pick us up. It turns out that our clothes were taking by one of my friend’s boyfriend and his friends. It was not at all funny because we could have been caught.”
Collector’s Comments
The members who attempted and completed the Dartmouth Seven mentioned above, each did it with the purpose to claim they completed the Ledyard Bridge Challenge. Collectively, the Ledyard Bridge Challenge is the most terrifying challenge on campus. Dartmouth Students’ motivation and purpose, as well as for each individual’s reason, to complete the Ledyard Bridge Challenge are so they could carry on Dartmouth tradition and culture that has been around for decades at Dartmouth. By completing the Ledyard Bridge Challenge, each person feels a closer sense of community that is immersed throughout this campus. The Ledyard Bridge Challenge allows a unique perspective for Dartmouth students to create bonds with other Dartmouth students that ties them into the folk group of Dartmouth Seven students, whether that be they successfully completed Ledyard Bridge, or if Hanover Police ended their attempts.
We participated in a slightly different Ledyard “challenge” back in the day:
The only requirement was to dive or jump from the center of the span, without being caught (it was illegal, and probably still is).
Additional kudos, recognition, and esteem were earned by diving instead of jumping feet-first, and in the case of some of my diving team fraternity brothers, performing front flips or back flips from the top rail of the fence.
Cheers!
I almost died doing that different version of the Ledyard “challenge” Dave is describing. It was late April of 2002, the end of my Freshman year. Decided to do the jump from the middle as a birthday present to myself and a few shots of whiskey deep. Had a couple of my buddies from the River dorms come out to watch with a camera. Problem was, the river had only thawed out a month before. I hit the water at a pretty high velocity and went probably 15 feet under. The water was ice cold, it was pitch black (being the middle of the night), I didn’t know which direction was up or down, and for a good 10-15 seconds I couldn’t move my arms or legs from the temperature. Had a moment of “well, this is how I die, you idiot.”
I somehow regained the slightest control of my arms, made out some bubbles to follow while awkwardly and slowly flapping my limbs, and broke the surface. Even when I did, my lungs wouldn’t work when I tried to breathe in for another few seconds, like an empty heaving of sorts.
I did the regular Ledyard Challenge too a few days before I graduated. Found this website from just now reflecting on that night from my freshman year and trying to figure out how high that fall from the Ledyard Bridge actually was. I’m not even really sure why or to whom I’m commenting all of this but if anyone ever reads this, just do that stuff in the summer. And definitely do it if you aren’t a strong swimmer (I played water polo)- we had a kid die doing the challenge just going across the river, I want to say it was the summer of 2004.