Soon, excursion trains were once again crossing the bridge and millions of visitors came to the bridge each year to walk across its still impressive expanse. However, in 1959, the bridge was sold to a company that planned to tear down the bridge.įortunately, upon seeing the beauty of the bridge, the company’s president decided that it was too wondrous to tear down, and the bridge was soon sold to the state of Pennsylvania, who turned the area surrounding the bridge into a state park. Over the next 59 years, the Kinzua Bridge was an important freight rail link in the region. Looking out of what remains of Kinzua Bridge. Despite the quality of the bridge, the use of iron in its construction did not allow it to accommodate the large locomotives that soon came along, and the bridge was completely dismantled and rebuilt from steel in 1900. The bridge itself only took 94 days to complete, an engineering feat in itself, and was over 300 feet high and 2,500 feet long. Ultimately, Kane chose to keep going straight across the Kinzua Valley. While trying to connect the rich coal mines of Elk County with the Pennsylvania Railroad track in Bradford, he had to make a difficult and expensive choice: should he build the largest railroad bridge ever attempted, or should he route his line eight miles across difficult terrain to an easier crossing? However, the Kinzua Bridge wasn’t built to be a tourist attraction.Ī few years earlier, Thomas Kane, President of the New York, Lake Erie, and Western Railroad, had a problem. Even after it lost this title in 1885, the bridge was still popular with excursion trains from as far away as Buffalo, New York, and Pittsburgh. The Kinzua Bridge has been attracting tourists since the day it was completed in late August of 1882.Īs the largest and tallest bridge in the world at the time of completion, it’s not hard to understand why.
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