The Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge once carried the York Branch of the

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad ( reporting mark PRR), legal name as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, also known as the "Pennsy," was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At its ...

across the

Susquehanna River The Susquehanna River ( ; Unami language, Lenape: ) is a major river located in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, crossing three lower Northeastern United States, Northeast states (New York, Pennsylvani ...

between Columbia and

Wrightsville, Pennsylvania Wrightsville is a Borough (Pennsylvania), borough in York County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 2,257 at the time of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is part of the York, Pennsylvania, York–Hanover metropolitan ar ...

and is therefore considered a Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge. It and its predecessors were a vital commercial and passenger linkage between

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

and

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

for over 100 years.

Earlier bridges on the site

Several bridges have been built on the site, with the first wooden

covered bridge A covered bridge is a timber-truss bridge with a roof, decking, and siding, which in most covered bridges create an almost complete enclosure. The purpose of the covering is to protect the wooden structural members from the weather. Uncovered woo ...

erected in the early 1830s to replace a nearby smaller toll bridge immediately upriver that had been destroyed by ice. Set on 26 stone piers, the new massive oaken structure was the longest covered bridge in the world (over a mile and a quarter in length). It used timber salvaged from the previous bridge and provided a link for the

Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad (P&CR) (1834) was one of the earliest commercial railroads in the United States, running from Philadelphia to Columbia, Pennsylvania, Columbia, Pennsylvania, it was built by the Pennsylvania Canal Commission in l ...

to the

Northern Central Railway The Northern Central Railway (NCRY) was a Class I Railroad in the United States connecting Baltimore, Maryland, with Sunbury, Pennsylvania, along the Susquehanna River. Completed in 1858, the line came under the control of the Pennsylvania R ...

, as well as for carriages, pedestrians and wagons. A towpath on the southern wall enabled teams of horses or mules to pull boats from the Mainline Canal on the Columbia side to the Tidewater and Susquehanna Canal on the Wrightsville side. This bridge was burned by state

militia A militia ( ) is a military or paramilitary force that comprises civilian members, as opposed to a professional standing army of regular, full-time military personnel. Militias may be raised in times of need to support regular troops or se ...

under Col. Jacob G. Frick and Maj. Granville O. Haller on June 28, 1863, to block elements of the

Confederate States Army The Confederate States Army (CSA), also called the Confederate army or the Southern army, was the Military forces of the Confederate States, military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) duri ...

under Brig. Gen.

John Brown Gordon John Brown Gordon () was an American politician, Confederate States Army general, attorney, slaveowner and planter. "One of Robert E. Lee's most trusted generals" by the end of the Civil War according to historian Ed Bearss, he strongly oppos ...

from crossing into Lancaster County shortly before the

Battle of Gettysburg The Battle of Gettysburg () was a three-day battle in the American Civil War, which was fought between the Union and Confederate armies between July 1 and July 3, 1863, in and around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle, won by the Union, ...

. For the rest of the war, cargo and passengers had to be laboriously ferried across the broad Susquehanna River. The Columbia Bridge Company constructed another wooden bridge on the same stone piers in the years just after the Civil War, restoring the railroad line. The Pennsylvania Railroad purchased this replacement bridge in 1879, but it was destroyed by a severe windstorm in 1896. These bridges were each known as the "Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge."

Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge

The last bridge on the site was built in 1896, just 29 days after the destruction of the previous wooden bridge. A steel truss bridge made of long prefabricated sections, it carried a single railroad track for the Pennsylvania Railroad, as well as a two-lane roadway. It was designed to be resistant to fire, floods, and ice, elements that had destroyed previous wooden structures. Like the previous bridges, tolls were collected for passage to recover a portion of the half million dollar investment. As originally envisioned, the new bridge was to have had two decks, the bottom one for trains and the upper for other traffic. The top deck was never added, and freight and passenger trains shared the planked lower deck with carriages, wagons, and aterwith automobiles and trucks crossing the river on the

Lincoln Highway The Lincoln Highway is one of the first transcontinental highways in the United States and one of the first highways designed expressly for automobiles. Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated Octob ...

. In 1930, automobile traffic was rerouted to the newly constructed Veterans Memorial Bridge, just downstream. The steel bridge reverted to only being used by the railroad, although usage eventually diminished considerably as commercial truck traffic on the Veterans Memorial Bridge (then part of

US 30 U.S. Route 30 or U.S. Highway 30 (US 30) is an east–west main route of the United States Numbered Highway System, with the highway traveling across the Northern U.S. With a length of , it is the third-longest U.S. Highway, afte ...

) increased. The track was removed and the bridge dismantled in 1963. The stone piers are still present in the river. A historical marker now commemorates the history of the bridge.

References

* Mingus, Scott L., ''Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition.'' Columbus, Ohio: Ironclad Publishing, 2009. {{Crossings navbox , structure = Bridges , place =

, bridge = Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge , bridge signs = ''Pennsylvania Railroad'' , upstream = Wright's Ferry Bridge , upstream signs = , downstream = Columbia–Wrightsville Bridge , downstream signs = Railroad bridges in Pennsylvania Bridges over the Susquehanna River Lincoln Highway Pennsylvania Railroad bridges U.S. Route 30 Pennsylvania in the American Civil War Bridges completed in 1896 Demolished bridges in the United States Bridges in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Bridges in York County, Pennsylvania Former toll bridges in Pennsylvania Steel bridges in the United States