Earth Support Corp

Essex CountyVermont

Brighton, Vermont

Bedrock sits a median 35 ft down across 238 logs, deeper than the Vermont median of 20 ft. None of its 8 inventoried bridges is rated poor.

Median depth to bedrock

35 ft

middle half 17–78 ft · 238 logs

Bridges rated poor

0

of 8 inventoried

FEMA repair $, Essex County

$4.3M

federal share since 2010 · county-wide

01 · Ground

Rock turns up a median 35 ft down

From 238 depth-to-rock records inside Brighton (Vermont DEC well records). Logs cluster where people drill wells and bore for roads, so treat this as the town’s pattern, not a site answer.

Half of Brighton's logs reach rock between 17 and 78 ft

Depth to bedrock: 10th–90th percentile whisker, middle-half box, median tick; dashed line = Vermont median.
median 35 ft
VT 20 ft
050100 ft
0204060800–5 ft5–10 ft10–20 ft20–50 ft50–100 ft100+ ft
n = 238 logsSource: Vermont DEC well records
▸ Show the numbers
Depth to rock (ft)Logs
0–512
5–1018
10–2039
20–5075
50–10062
100+32

Rock within 10 ft

16%

of logs (34% across Vermont). Shallow rock means ledge in excavations, refusal for driven piles and rock anchors rather than soil nails; deep ground means taller shoring and more groundwater. 38% of logs here go past 50 ft.

02 · Bridges

None of Brighton's 8 bridges is rated poor

Every highway bridge and large culvert in the 2025 National Bridge Inventory that stands inside Brighton. Median age 54 years; 1 posted for weight.

63% good, 0% poor

FHWA good / fair / poor rating — the lowest of deck, superstructure, substructure or culvert.
  • Good5 · 63%
  • Fair3 · 38%
  • Poor0 · 0%
n = 8 structuresSource: FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025
▸ Show the numbers
BuiltStructures
1910s1
1920s1
1950s1
1970s2
1980s1
2000s1
2010s1

03 · Dams & disasters

Essex County has drawn $4.3M in federal disaster repair since 2010

FEMA Public Assistance is reported by county, so the figure below is Essex County-wide context, not a Brighton number.

FEMA Public Assistance, Essex County

$4.3M

Federal share obligated across 152 projects in 10 declared disasters since 2010. The largest category is roads & bridges (95%); roads & bridges took $4.1M.
Dams, disasters & moving ground

04 · Money & permits

2 ground-related permits in the city's open data

Ground-related permits in open data

2

Permits in the city’s open-data portal that mention retaining walls, excavation or foundations. Only a handful of portals are read, so this counts what is published, not everything built.

05 · Next door

Brighton and the 8 towns that border it

A dash means no data for that layer, not zero.
Brighton compared with neighbouring towns
TownPoor bridgesRock depth
Brighton, VT0 / 835 ft
Charleston, VT1 / 1120 ft
Lewis, VT0 / 4
Morgan, VT1 / 318 ft
Newark, VT0 / 120 ft
Ferdinand, VT0 / 126 ft
Westmore, VT20 ft
Avery's, VT
Warren's, VT

Where these numbers come from

Method, sources & caveats

Brighton is the Census county subdivision 5000908725 (Essex County). Every record is placed here by its coordinates, not by the place name the source uses.

  • Towns are Census county subdivisions: cities, towns, plantations, and Maine/New Hampshire unorganized territories and townships. Every record is placed in a town by its coordinates (point-in-polygon), not by the source's own place label — so a bridge in Roxbury counts for Boston and a well in 'North Waltham' counts for Waltham.
  • Bridges: FHWA NBI 2025, highway structures ≥ 20 ft including large culverts. 'Poor' is FHWA's good/fair/poor rating (lowest of deck, superstructure, substructure or culvert ≤ 4). Percent-poor is shown only for towns with at least 5 structures.
  • Depth to bedrock is the median of driller- and boring-reported depths in the town, shown only where at least 10 logs exist. Water-well logs over-sample rural lots and hilltops; one town median never describes a particular site.
  • Bedrock depths use the same state databases and filters as the Bedrock & soils module (bedrock wells and borings that reached rock, 0 < depth ≤ 400 ft, exact re-filings dropped), but every log is placed in a town by its coordinates rather than the driller's town field, so town counts can differ slightly between the two pages. Connecticut and Rhode Island have no statewide public well-log database with depths.
  • Dams: only high-hazard-potential dams whose latest condition assessment is Poor or Unsatisfactory are counted (live NID). Connecticut and Rhode Island assessments may lag.
  • FEMA Public Assistance dollars are federal share obligated for disasters declared since 2010, reported by county — they are county context, not a town figure.
  • Grant awards are Massachusetts only (EEA Dam & Seawall program, MVP Action grants, CZM Coastal Resilience). Other states' programs are not yet included.
  • Ground-related permit counts cover only the municipal portals the pipeline reads (Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Worcester, Framingham, Providence, Portsmouth, Hartford and a few others) — an absent count means 'not covered', not zero.
Data as of
Sep 11, 2026
Generated
Sep 11, 2026
Records
367,748
Refresh
Live pull · weekly

Published by Earth Support Corp as a public resource. Regional statistics for planning and curiosity. They are not an engineering report, a bid recommendation or a statement about any particular site, firm or project. Spot an error? Tell us and we will correct it. Full method: methodology.

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