Starrucca Viaduct
Lanesboro, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Built in 1847-48 by the Erie Railroad, it is the oldest stone railroad bridge in the State in use today. Viaduct is 1040 feet long, 100 feet high, and 25 feet wide at the top.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the late 1840s the Erie Railroad was pushing its main line across the rugged uplands of northeastern Pennsylvania, and the deep valley of Starrucca Creek stood in the way. Rather than detour, engineers raised a soaring bridge of locally quarried bluestone—more than a thousand feet long and towering a hundred feet above the water—completed in 1847-48. That it still carries trains today makes it one of the oldest stone railroad viaducts in continuous use in the country.
Why it matters
The viaduct is a monument to the early railroad age, when American engineers built in stone for the ages and stitched isolated valleys into a national transportation network.
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Nearby & related markers
Tunkhannock Viaduct
Nicholson Township, PA · est. 1995
When it opened in 1915 on the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, the Tunkhannock Viaduct was the largest reinforced-concrete structure ever built. Stretching 2,375 feet and rising 240 feet above Tunkhannock Creek, it was the centerpiece of a nearly forty-mile line relocation meant to straighten and speed the railroad. The novelist Theodore Dreiser marveled at it as "one of the true wonders of the world."
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