PENOBSCOT – One of the town’s old bridges is missing.

Somebody stole it.

Apparently, in broad daylight earlier this week, thieves took the large granite blocks that formed the upper portion of the bridge over McCaslin Stream. The bridge was located off an abandoned town road in North Penobscot not far from the Blue Hill town line.

According to State Trooper Tom Pickering, the thieves approached the bridge in a pulp truck from a dirt road off Route 15 in North Blue Hill on Tuesday afternoon. They also found and used a skidder left up the road by someone who was working in the woods, Pickering said.

“They used the skidder to get down to the bridge and then they skidded out a number of pieces of granite from the bridge,” he said. The lack of rain recently had left that part of the stream dry.

The thieves used the grappling hook on the logging truck to load up the granite and then drove off.

At about 3 p.m. that afternoon, witnesses saw a large pulp truck leaving the area loaded with granite on the back. Witnesses described the truck as being black or dark-colored with a white or light-colored stripe on the side.

The thieves took about a dozen blocks of granite from the bridge, Pickering said. The blocks were 16-20 inches thick, about a foot tall and between 12 and 14 feet long, he said. Although he’s still investigating the value of the blocks, initial estimates pegged their worth at as much as $1,000 a piece.

Andy Birdsall of Penobscot was the first to report the theft on Wednesday. Birdsall owns land in the area around the bridge, but Pickering said there is some uncertainty about who owns the land the bridge is on. Since the initial complaint, several other people, and the town of Penobscot, have said they own the bridge, he said.

The bridge dates back to the early 1800s, according to some residents. It was built with granite cribwork on the lower portion of the bridge, set Lincoln-log style to allow water to pass through. The larger granite pieces had been laid end to end to provide a 20-foot-long, 8-foot-wide travel way about six or more feet above the stream bed.

It has not been in use officially, but area residents hiked over it and four-wheelers and snowmobilers also travel over it. In recent years, the condition of the bridge had deteriorated and some of the granite pieces had dropped into the stream bed.

Penobscot resident Jane Crosen is a frequent walker through the area and often stopped at the bridge. She said she came upon the scene after the granite was taken.

“It’s a pretty ugly scene there,” she said. “You can see all the scratched-up stone.”

The removal may also have disturbed the area enough to block the water flow through the bridge, she said.

Crosen views the bridge as a historical artifact, and said it was a shame it’s been destroyed.

“It was sort of a historical monument,” she said. “It was one of the few things in town that I could think of that had been there for a long, long time. To me, that was the value of it.”

She said she hoped the granite would be recovered and returned to the stream.

Police have a few leads in the case, which remains under investigation. The thieves could face theft and criminal mischief charges, which could become felony charges based on the value finally placed on the granite.