Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge (Columbia, Pennsylvania)
| Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Coordinates | 40°01′45″N 76°31′04″W / 40.0293°N 76.5179°W |
| Carries | railroad tracks and two-lane automobile roadway |
| Crosses | Susquehanna River |
| Locale | York County, Pennsylvania and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania |
| Other name(s) | Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge |
| Maintained by | Pennsylvania Railroad |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | prefabricated open-air steel trusses |
| Total length | 5,375 feet |
| Longest span | equal 200-foot (61 m) sections |
| Clearance below | 14 feet above flood stage |
| History | |
| Opened | 1896 |
| Closed | 1963 |
| Statistics | |
| Toll | varied by vehicle type |
The Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge once carried the York Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad across the Susquehanna River between Columbia and Wrightsville, Pennsylvania and is therefore considered a Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge. It and its predecessors were a vital commercial and passenger linkage between Philadelphia and Baltimore for over 100 years.
Several bridges have been built on the site, with the first wooden covered bridge 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 to the Northern Central Railway, 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 under Col. Jacob G. Frick and Maj. Granville O. Haller on June 28, 1863, to block elements of the Confederate States Army under Brig. Gen. John Brown Gordon from crossing into Lancaster County shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg. For the rest of the war, cargo and passengers had to be laboriously ferried across the broad Susquehanna River.
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