History
The original structure was built as a steel girder bridge with concrete piers. The steel was provided from a plant operated by Bethlehem Steel, directly adjacent to the turnpike in Steelton, Pennsylvania. It was opened to traffic in 1950.
On November 16, 2004, the Turnpike Commission let a contract for a bridge to replace the 1950 span. Two new 3-lane segmental, concrete signature spans were constructed just upriver from the old 4 lane span. The new span was the first of its type built in Pennsylvania at a cost of nearly $100 million . The westbound span opened on 17 May 2007, and the eastbound span was opened on 17 June 2007. The new roadway and bridges opened to normal traffic flow in the summer of 2008. Destruction of the old span was planned to begin in July 2007.
Read more about this topic: Susquehanna River Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)