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:
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)