Alexander Spring Creek rises from a limestone spring three miles south of the bridge, is designated a PA Cold Water and Migratory Fishery, and empties into the Conodoguinet Creek less than a mile north of the trail. The Cumberland Valley Railroad first crossed the creek in 1837, when the Carlisle-to-Newville trip took 50 minutes, and the last train crossed the bridge in 1981. The sandstone bridge was built in 1902 by Italian stonemasons to replace an earlier bridge destroyed in that year’s record spring flooding. Designed to carry two sets of tracks for passenger and freight trains on the Cumberland Valley Railroad, it handled up to a dozen passenger trains daily, and by 1928, when it was part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, as many as twenty passenger trains per day crossed it. Peter Yorlet, known as French Pete, died of a heart attack on August 25, 1902, at age 75 while carrying water to workmen on the bridge. Born in Bordeaux, France, in 1827, he was reportedly a veteran of the Crimean War and also served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and he is buried in the Bear Graveyard on Creek Rd. near Bears Rd. north and west of Plainfield, PA.