For Milanville’s Cynthia Nash, the Skinners Falls Bridge isn’t just a relic, it’s an icon.
“It has a kind of lyricism,” she said at a Jan. 12 celebration for the bridge, less than one month after Gov. Josh Shapiro announced an emergency declaration to demolish the 124-year crossing.
Skinners Falls is among the nation’s last Baltimore truss bridges, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) and the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Built in the early 1900s, it connects Milanville, Pa., and Skinners Falls, N.Y., over the Delaware River.
PennDOT and the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) closed Skinners Falls in 2019 due to structural issues. Five years later, officials announced during a Dec. 17 virtual meeting that they will demolish the span, potentially with explosives.
For more information on the Skinners Bridge Project, visit PennDOT’s webpage on the bridge.
The bridge’s pending explosion lit a fire in residents and a citizens’ group is debating taking legal action against PennDOT and Shapiro.
Poets, singers, artists and writers gathered at Narrowsburg Union in New York on Sunday to celebrate the bridge’s history and future for community members from both sides of the Delaware.
Brooklyn-based singer Lucas Maehara Rotman sang his song, “These Feet,” which he wrote while walking on the Brooklyn Bridge in reference to the many people who walked the bridge before him.
With a guitar in hand and a harmonica around his neck, Maehara Rotman told the audience of around 50 people that their participation shows how people can come together when it matters most.
“In order for us to sort of make any kind of change in this world ... we gotta bridge that gap between us,” said Maehara Rotman, who owns a second home in Damascus Township, which surrounds Milanville. “What I love is, like, you come to an event like this, and it's not just about right-wing, left-wing or chicken wing, right? We got all kinds of folks here from different walks of life, and who have different ideologies and belief systems. But you know what? We showed up, dude. We showed up to be a part of this and fight the good fight. And so I think that means a lot.”
“We didn't want there to be any tacit agreement that the bridge is going down,” added Nash, who organized the celebration. “It's not going to go down easily.”
Nash, who believes the bridge saved her life during an emergency rush to the hospital, fears its removal will threaten Milanville’s historical status. The Milanville Historic District is preserved under the National Register of Historic Places alongside the Skinner Falls Bridge.
Now, she says Milanville and surrounding residents have a duty to secure the bridge’s preservation.
“The bridge was built by the community and the community is what is going to save it,” said Nash, after sharing Skinner Falls’ history.
The Skinners Falls Bridge was built in 1901 by Milton Skinner as an alternative to the ferry system that carried people across the river, she said.
Residents from both communities added their own stories. Many described how the bridge’s narrow, one-lane-road “transported” visitors to a “seemingly earlier time” where drivers had to do a kind of dance to decide right-of-way.
Jane Cyphers remembers bringing her own children to walk over the bridge. She said she can still “hear the sounds of the wooden slats clinking.”
Now, she tells her grandchildren a new story about the bridge and hopes they will return to enjoy its natural beauty.
“Well, one day you'll be able to go over this bridge and you'll be able to hear the sounds of the woods, like your mother did when she was a kid,” she said, in deep reverie. “She would ride our bike over here. We'd all ride our bikes down there. And, y’know, we had just these are our neighbors too, who live all around it. And the reality is that it can be saved. It can be saved. We need to honor these, the work of our ancestors, these engineers who did things. They did things to last. So, now we need to rebuild them.”
Cyphers is a founding member of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability (DCS), a a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the Delaware River Watershed.
Nash said the community, alongside DCS, will do everything in its power to protect Skinners Falls. She said the people’s consensus on the bridge “transcends politics. [The bridge] touches the heart. It touches the mind. It touches the soul.”
“The bridge is bridging all sorts of divides. It's bridging the states, it's bridging different parts of the community. And I just really hope that what I'd really like to see is for our governor to come to the township to see the bridge,” said Nash, who described Shapiro’s emergency order to protect residents' lives a “death warrant” for the bridge.
DCS Director Barbara Arrindell said on Sunday her organization may file a preliminary injunction against PennDOT seeking to stop the bridge’s destruction, start rehabilitation and restoration, and to prevent further bridge decay.
DCS is taking donations to cover potential legal costs, she added.
