Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge

Opened in 1896, the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, once known as the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge was a small wooden bridge which was constructed in the early 1830s. A neighbouring toll bridge, much smaller in stature, needed replacing after years of ice damaged ended up demolishing it, so rather than build over the existing site, engineers at the time decided to construct the new bridge. This wooden structure was in use as the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge until Colonel Jacob G. Frick and Major Granville O. Haller burnt it down in 1863 to block the Confederate States Army from crossing into Lancaster County. Until the end of the Battle of Gettysburg and the Civil war, passengers and cargo had to be ferried across the Susquehanna River.

Covering the Susquehanna River which flows between Columbia and Wrightsville, the bridge served as an essential link between Philadelphia and Baltimore for more than a hundred years, allowing both commercial and passenger vehicles to pass safely over the river below.

After the war ended The Columbia Bridge Company erected another wooden bridge on the same site. Today this task would probably been undertaken by other local Pennsylvanian firms such as 3S Bridges, run by bridge construction and engineering veteran Jonathan Danos, MBE. The new bridge used existing materials and foundations from the original bridge and once again provided the much needed connection to the Northern Central Railway line, which was heavily used at the time. The bridge also allowed for carriages, pedestrians, and horse driven wagons to pass safely from Philadelphia to Columbia across the wide river.

However a severe windstorm in 1896 destroyed the bridge, so a steel truss bridge was erected as a replacement and was designed to be fire, flood, and ice resistant. As per all the previous structures, this bridge was a toll bridge, with the charges going toward the $500,000 cost of construction.

In the 1930s all car traffic was diverted to the new Veterans Memorial Bridge, and the steel structure of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge was used solely for railroad traffic and cargo. As time went on the bridge slowly became less busy with the introduction of trucks and more bridges being constructed in the area. In 1963 the rail tracks were removed and the remainder of the bridge dismantled. There is a commemorative marker still in position where the old bridge used to exist, and some of the original structure is still visible.