Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge - York County, PA
N 40° 01.766 W 076° 30.897
18T E 370737 N 4432123
In 1984 this bridge was designated a Historic Civil Engineering landmark. It has the distinction of being the world's longest concrete, multiple-arched bridge. It spans the Susquehanna River between Columbia and Wrightsville.
Waymark Code: WM6T3C
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Date Posted: 07/16/2009
Views: 10
The Wiley-Maxon Construction Company began building the bridge in 1929 and finished construction in 1930. This bridge has a lot of history. It has been rebuilt several times over the last 150 years or so and was destroyed during the Civil War. It was once a covered wooden bridge a few times over. Now it is a steel reinforced, multiple, concrete arched bridge. It is considered to be the longest bridge of this type in the world. The bridge was designed by James B. Long and is approximately 5,183 feet (1,580 m) long. If you are traveling to York, PA from the Philly area you will have to cross this bridge or its sister bridge, Wright's Ferry Bridge, a quarter mile away or so to get over this river.
From the Designated Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks found on the American Society of Civil Engineers page SOURCE
"When completed in 1930, this was the longest (one-mile) multiple-arch concrete highway bridge in the world. To achieve this economically, civil engineers developed a unique system of combining a parallel construction railway, track mounted whirly cranes and re-usable steel forms. It remains in full service today and is also the site of a historic American Covered Bridge that existed between 1812 and 1833."
"The total length of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge is 7,374 feet. Its construction required 100,000 cubic yards of concrete and 8 million pounds of steel reinforcing rods.
Consisting of 28 arches, each 185 feet long, the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge carrying automobile traffic across the Susquehanna River in southeast Pennsylvania is believed to be the longest concrete-arch bridge in the world. The bridge's location is also historically significant. The longest covered wooden bridge in the world - 5,690 feet long - was built there in 1814, only to be destroyed by ice and floods almost 20 years later. Its replacement - 70 feet shorter but considerably wider - was burned 30 years later by Union troops as a tactical measure during the Civil War.
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