Beginning in 1838, the cars of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad were carried across the Susquehanna River by the first railroad ferry in the U.S. A rail bridge replaced the ferry in 1866. The surviving granite piers carried the bridge until the 1906 opening of the new Pennsylvania Railroad bridge upstream, then carried a one-way vehicular toll bridge and later a two-way double decker until 1940, when the U.S. Route 40 bridge opened on a new alignment.