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| London's Tower Bridge |
Pennsylvania was one of the first settled areas of the United States - it should come as little surprise that it possesses one of the most interesting collections of historic bridges of any state.
Although the majority of Pennsylvania's bridges date from the twentieth century, some of the older routes have bridges built in the early colonial years. America's oldest stone arch bridge, constructed in 1697, still carries Frankford Avenue over Pennypack Creek on U.S. Route 13 in Philadelphia, and at least five eighteenth-century stone arch bridges remain.
Pennsylvania claims the first wire-cable suspension bridge in the world, as well. This bridge was developed by Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, ironmasters and owners of a rolling mill and wire plant in Philadelphia, who built a small suspension bridge, in 1816, across the Schuylkill River so their workers could walk to the factory. Pennsylvanian Charles Ellet Jr. (1810-1862) constructed the first wire-cable suspension bridge used for general public transportation over the Schuylkill at Fairmount, in 1842.
America's oldest surviving suspension bridge spans the Delaware River between New York and Pennsylvania. It originally served as an aqueduct carrying the Delaware and Hudson Canal over the Delaware River at Lackawaxen, the only kind of its type in the world. It was designed by John A. Roebling (1806-1869), of Brooklyn Bridge fame, who arrived in the United States in 1831 and established an agricultural community later named Saxonburg, in Butler County. The first all-iron vehicular bridge, erected in 1839, replaced one of Finley's suspension bridges and remains in service.
The preservation of these bridges may sound brilliant but the only way they will succeed is through public involvement. It is an old American proverb that a traveler should respect the bridge that carries him or her over dangerous areas.
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