Retired U.S. Marine Richard Bailey of Dresden has crossed over the old Richmond-Dresden bridge so often, he figured he and wife Faith Bailey should come out Friday morning and see the ribbon cut on its replacement.

“It’s a beautiful piece of construction. They did a heck of a job,” he said about Reed & Reed, the Woolwich contractor that built the new one, which, like its predecessor, is named the Maine Kennebec Bridge. Area residents typically called the 1931 bridge by the names of the towns it connected.

The Baileys, who can see the new bridge from their house, walked around on it Friday along with several hundred other people who braved temperatures in the teens for the ceremony.

Faith Bailey said the railings were higher than they looked from a distance. She liked that, and her husband said they will get used to the new bridge’s height, about 115 feet over the water at low tide, according to Maine Department of Transportation Commissioner David Bernhardt.

His comment drew a collective “Wooh,” from the crowd.

Richard Bailey said his daughter, who lives in Portland, has said she will go by way of Gardiner to go see them to avoid going on the new taller, bridge. The old one is not an option.

Reed & Reed would start taking it apart the week of Dec. 8, Bernhardt said. The old bridge is due to be fully dismantled by next summer.

Since the entire project was supposed to be done by December 2015, it is running six months ahead of schedule, officials said.

One of Dresden’s best known residents, Eleanor Everson, 85, said she would have preferred it only be on schedule, so that the ribbon-cutting could have been held in the summer.

In an interview in the backseat of a warm car before the ceremony, Everson said that although she understands the reasons for replacing for the old bridge, she never minded it.

“Even the clackety-clack,” she said.

She was glad the contract went to a business in a neighboring town, she said.

From the front passenger seat, fellow Dresden resident Keith McKay, 89, said Reed & Reed did a spectacular job on the bridge.

“It’s awesome and then some,” he added.

At the podium later, Reed & Reed President Jack Parker praised those who worked the project. Citing the cold morning the ceremony fell on, Parker recalled that last winter, workers there withstood temperatures of 20 degrees below zero, along with howling winds. Winds were calm Friday morning, but the cold was a running theme for speakers, who said it would keep their speeches short.

Gov. Paul LePage, R-Maine, told the schoolchildren on hand that, 50 years from now, they could recall being there that day, singing there and freezing there.

The temperature was about 18 F at the time of the ceremony, according to meteorologist Margaret Curtis at the National Weather Service’s Gray office.

U.S. Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the bridge she helped get federal funding for will be absolutely critical to the local economy. Bath Iron Works employees will take it to get to work, and it will serve the region for at least 100 years, she said.

“And (it will) remind us that we all are indeed ‘under one sky,’” she said, referring to a song students from Dresden Elementary School and Marcia Buker Elementary School in Richmond sang together minutes earlier.

Bernhardt, LePage and Gregory Nadeau, acting administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, praised Collins’ efforts to replace the old bridge.

Jonathan Yellowbear of the Sokoki Band of Abenaki Nation expressed thanks at the podium, for the safety the new bridge will provide and for the beautiful day.