Easton’s first commercial crossing of the Delaware River was a ferry enfranchised to David Martin in 1739. Located near the present site of Scott Park at the junction of the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers, it operated until the beginning of the nineteenth century. After about a half-century of use, the ferry could no longer adequately serve commerce and was replaced with a covered, wooden bridge that opened to traffic on October 14, 1806. The covered bridge was designed and built by Timothy Palmer, one of the foremost bridge builders of his time. By the late nineteenth century, when horse-drawn streetcars were replaced by trolley cars, the old wooden bridge could no longer handle traffic demands, and a new structure was erected at Northampton Street. The Northampton Street Bridge, also known as the Free Bridge, was designed by James Madison Porter III, a nearby Lafayette College graduate in civil engineering from a family long prominent in Easton and Pennsylvania history. The Northampton Street Bridge is designated an Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
