History
Following the destruction of the Yardley-Wilburtha Bridge in the August flood of 1955, plans were made to build a new bridge about 1.3 miles (2.1 km) north of the old site. The Delaware River Joint Toll Commission was responsible for the construction of the bridge, while New Jersey and Pennsylvania built the approaches to each side. Because the bridge was not originally part of the Interstate Highway System, the cost of construction was not 90% covered by the Federal government. Instead, they covered 50% of the cost of the new span, while New Jersey and Pennsylvania paid the remaining 50% of the total bill, as with an ordinary U.S. Highway route.
In April 1958, the location of the future Scudder Falls Bridge was approved with little opposition. Construction, overseen by the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission, began in May of the same year and was completed in 1959. The new bridge, which had cost $8.4 million, opened to traffic on June 22, 1961.
Read more about this topic: Scudder Falls Bridge
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“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
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the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
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asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)