Remains of the Port Trevorton Bridge

USA / Pennsylvania / Herndon /

At Port Trevorton a wooden bridge was built across the Susquehanna, of timber found on the Isle of Que at Selinsgrove and floated down stream. The structure was 3460 feet long, and there was a trestle of 1400 feet more. In 1885 The bridge was made profitable by adapting it to highway use as well as for the railroad, though, curiously, there was no partition between the railroad and the footway. the main crossing for all the travel to Pottsville, Reading, &c." For a time it looked as if the prophecy was to be fulfilled, when it was used not only by travelers, but by immense droves of cattle. Frequently there were so many cattle wanting to cross that the fields about Port Trevorton were filled with them. The continual passage of the cattle endangered the bridge, already weakened by the chemical action of acid in the bark on the pine limbers. Fearing a repetition of the disaster by which the rhythmic motion of fifteen hundred cattle had caused a bridge not far away to fall into the river, the Reading Company, the purchasers of the railroad, took down the structure. For many years the piers stood in the stream; traces of them may still be discovered. These are the last relics
of the pioneer road of Snyder County, whose rails were removed soon after the destruction of the bridge. The Port Trevorton bridge led across to Northumberland County, one of the strangest contour of the many oddly shaped counties in Pennsylvania.
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Coordinates:   40°42'35"N   76°51'12"W
This article was last modified 16 years ago