The Starrucca Viaduct was built by the Erie Railroad in 1847-48 as part of the New York and Erie line, the first railroad to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes, stretching 483 miles from Piermont on the Hudson River to Dunkirk on Lake Erie. Although the charter required the route to remain entirely in New York State, the line crossed into Pennsylvania to avoid difficult terrain. Built under the direction of James Pugh Kirkwood, with bridge design by Julius W. Adams, the viaduct was completed in November 1848 and the track was laid by the end of that month. About 800 men, mostly Irish immigrants, did the stone masonry work while living in a city of tents and earning about one dollar a day. Because the railroad charter was due to expire in 1848, the project was pushed forward regardless of cost, and it became the largest and most expensive stone arch bridge built in America at the time, estimated at $316,770. The structure stood 100 feet high, measured 1040 feet long, had a 26-foot deck, and carried 17 arches. Its pier footings were dug 6 to 9 feet into the valley floor and poured in concrete. The bridge was built largely from locally quarried Pennsylvania bluestone hauled from Stevens Point and another nearby quarry, used Rosendale Cement in its piers and mortar, and included brick supporting arches made on site from nearby clay. To meet the deadline, all 17 arches were supported at once by separate falsework built from a half million feet of cored and hewn timbers. On December 9, 1848, the first engine to cross was the New York and Erie's 15 ton 4-4-0 locomotive Orange, built by Norris Locomotive Works of Philadelphia. The viaduct also figured in broader railroad and industrial history: wrought-iron T-rails for the broad-gauge Erie Railroad were made at the new Lackawanna Iron Works, the first large order for such rails in the country and a contract that marked the industrial birth of Scranton. A Delaware and Hudson depot built nearby in 1871 linked rail connections that helped move coal directly to Albany, though the depot was removed around 1945. The entire Erie Railroad opened in May 1851, and the viaduct later appeared in art, periodicals, newspapers, and books. Recognized as a Historical Civil Engineering Landmark in 1973 and placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1975, it has remained in continuous use through later railroad ownerships and operations into the present.