Crossing the River

The Susquehanna River long challenged travel, and for almost 150 years Wrightsville had the only bridge between this area and Maryland. Other efforts to add crossings in the Lower Susquehanna Gorge below Wrightsville were short lived because of storms, floods, or ice jams, until the Norman Wood Bridge near Susquehannock State Park was completed in 1968. During the 1700s and 1800s, boats ferried travelers across the river, with drivers poling flat-bottomed ferries from bank to bank when flood, ice, or low water did not block passage, and Wright's Ferry on the main road from Philadelphia to York was so heavily used that travelers sometimes waited two days to cross. Six bridges were built across the Susquehanna between Wrightsville and Columbia, beginning with an 1814 bridge at Wrightsville that was the longest covered bridge of its time; after flooding destroyed it, it was rebuilt to let mules pull canal boats across, and Union troops burned it in 1863 to block Confederate troops, leaving stone piers still visible. Travelers now use Veterans Memorial Bridge, the world's longest concrete, multiple-arch bridge. The Lower Susquehanna Gorge was also dangerous for early canal travel because of rocky shallows and deep water; the Susquehanna Canal on the eastern shore was completed in 1802, and the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal opened along the west bank in 1840, using 29 locks to carry boats 43 miles from Havre de Grace, Maryland, to Wrightsville and giving Baltimore access to Pennsylvania coal, lumber, and other raw materials. Railroads eventually replaced the canals by moving freight and passengers faster and more reliably through the year, and trains still run today, while converted railroad beds now support hiking and biking. Samuel S. Lewis State Park occupies the top of Mt. Pisgah, where updrafts make it a popular place for kite flying, and the area also offers walking, picnicking, disc golf, and winter sledding or tobogganing.

Pennsylvania · United States