Skip to main content

Old Stone Arch Bridge - Lewistown, Pennsylvania

Image
By

 


With its original construction dating back to 1813, Lewistown, Pennsylvania's Old Stone Arch Bridge is certainly one of the oldest existing stone arch bridges in the United States. The bridge is considered to be the oldest single span stone arch bridge in central Pennsylvania, although Pennsylvania does have its fair share of stone arch bridges in the eastern and southern sections of the commonwealth. Built by Philip Diehl over Jacks Creek as part of the historic Harrisburg and Pittsburgh Turnpike, this bridge is one of the remaining pieces of the old turnpike, most of which has either been paved over or lost to time. As the old turnpike and the stone arch bridge follow close to US 22 in Lewistown, it is likely that parts of the old turnpike is now on roads that thousands of people drive daily.

One interesting feature of the Old Stone Arch Bridge is that the arch does not have a keystone. The bridge has lived a rather quiet existence over the past few centuries, but the bridge was brought a small amount of renown when it was featured in a lithograph by Currier and Ives in 1850. The bridge had repair work in 1930 and 1957, and was fully restored in 2006.

Regarding the restoration that took place in 2006, the ball started rolling on that a few years prior. In 2002, Mifflin County was awarded in 2002 a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to make structural repairs to the Old Stone Arch Bridge. Final plans for the bridge were completed and approved in 2004 and project construction began in June 2005.

The work on this historic bridge included repairing the concrete walls and stone arch, reinforcing the concrete substructure within the bridge's walls, installing an interior drainage system and constructing a walkway from Jacks Creek to the bridge. The total final cost of the project was about $460,000. Work on the stone arch bridge was completed in November 2005 while landscaping, bank stabilization, and walkway improvements along Grant Avenue were completed in May 2006.

Today, there is a small park around the Old Stone Arch Bridge, allowing for passive recreation and appreciation of the bridge. One can peacefully enjoy the bridge from a reasonable distance, or get up closer to the bridge as I have done. As a fan of stone arch bridges, I had to make the detour to see the Old Stone Arch Bridge when my travels took me through Lewistown. Even with battling a little rain and hearing thunder in the not-so-far distance, it was worth visiting.


bi







How to Get There:



Sources and Links:
Waymarking.com - Stone Arch Bridge - Lewistown, PA
Interesting Pennsylvania and Beyond - Lewistown's Old Stone Arch Bridge Park: Quaint 200+ Year Old Bridge
Bridgehunter.com - Old Arch Bridge
Scenic USA - Pennsylvania - Old Stone Arch Bridge
Mifflin County, Pennsylvania - Historic Preservation


Update Log:
September 25, 2021 - Crossposted to Quintessential Pennsylvania / https://quintessentialpa.blogspot.com/2021/09/old-stone-arch-bridge-lewistown.html
Labels:
Location: 1 Jacks Creek Ln, Lewistown, PA 17044, USA

Comments

Unknown said…
Can this location be rented for weddings and such? And who would you contact? Thank you.
12:55 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third
Post a Comment
Read more