Hester Greene remembers the serenity of driving across the Skinners Falls Bridge over the Delaware River to get from her home in Damascus Township, Pa. to Cochecton, New York.
“It [would] make a whole different sound under your wheels,” Greene said, reminiscing. “You're impelled to go slow because it's one lane. You're driving on wooden planks, held up by iron steel trusses. [And there’s a] beautiful, quiet neighborhood on the other side [of the bridge] and the beautiful river setting.”
But the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) tore the bridge down last month, citing concerns about its structural integrity, and area residents like Greene are fighting to see its history memorialized.
The structure linking Milanville, Pa., and Skinners Falls, New York, was one of the nation’s last Baltimore truss bridges. Built in 1901 by Milton Skinner, it was listed twice on the National Register of Historic Places.
Greene spoke outside of New York’s Tusten Town Hall on April 30, after a meeting PennDOT held to discuss “cultural mitigation” efforts to preserve both communities' history.
For 32 years, Greene said she traveled the bridge nearly every day. It was far smaller than the other bridges in the area, and it couldn’t take any heavy machinery or trucks. The bridge only connected the two communities in the area. She spoke in present tense when recollecting the bridge.
“People have to stop a minute if there's someone already coming. And they have to be polite. You know, we need to be polite in our society. And in 32 years of crossing it … I think only one surly person insisted on meeting me more than halfway across the bridge,” Greene said.
Damascus native Jeff Dexter chimed in beside her.
“Might have been my dad,” Dexter said with a chuckle. “He didn't mind crossing the bridge with another car coming. ‘Course, cars were a little bit smaller, but … you only had about this much distance between two cars.”
With his right hand, he held two fingers about an inch apart to show how narrow the distance was between cars.
Both Greene and Dexter said they wished PennDOT had acted sooner to protect the bridge from removal. PennDOT initially closed the bridge to all pedestrian and vehicular traffic in 2019.
Residents and members of local environmental organizations like Damascus Citizens for Sustainability (DCS) and the Upper Delaware Council (UDC) argued with PennDOT over ways to memorialize the bridge. Some people tuned into the meeting over ZOOM.
Return of remnants sought
Barbara Arrindell, DCS’s director, demanded PennDOT return all pieces of the bridge to residents, including stone that was not part of the bridge, but which was used to build a causeway to tear the bridge down.
PennDOT’s Kris Thompson, a cultural resource specialist supervisor, said bridge pieces would be distributed to those who ask for them, but that stone from the causeway is the contractor’s property.
“You’re talking about the construction materials that was used to build the causeway, which have no relationship to the bridge,” Thompson said.
“It was used to destroy the bridge,” an outraged Arrindell said. “Of course it has a relationship with the bridge.”
Residents asked questions about the environmental impacts of removing the bridge, like remaining debris or changes to the flow of the river.
Thompson and Heather Gerling, a cultural resource professional, said PennDOT would send divers into the water to check for debris, but added that they could not answer environmental questions as it was not their department.
Several attendees, including Arrindell, questioned whether PennDOT’s alleged inaction in fixing Skinners Falls led to its destruction.
Removing the bridge cost PennDOT somewhere between $8 and $10 million, according to Arindell, who argued the department was searching for excuses to tear down Skinners Falls and replace it with a bridge that could accomodate heavy machinery and trucks.
'Erosion of public trust'
Andrea MacDonald, director of the State Historical Preservation Office, commented on the “erosion of public trust related to how this project was handled.”
She said she hopes to see how a mitigation agreement could include language to improve reporting on work done towards future projects and was interested in hearing more about the creation of a fund to support preservation efforts along the Delaware River.
UDC’s Executive Director Laurie Ramie proposed the creation of the Upper Delaware River Valley Historic Preservation and Interpretation Grant Program, which would divert mitigation funds to protect resources in rural communities in parts of Pennsylvania and New York.
In response to questions about public trust, Thompson said PennDOT started training a historic bridge manager, Emily Rebert, six months ago. Rebert has no engineering experience, but worked in several preservation agencies, according to Thompson.
She added PennDOT is working with local communities to identify potential issues with historic bridges across the state.
“It's like a historic home. If you don't maintain it, it you're going to have trouble later on … So we've been working with those communities to identify … which bridges could potentially be rehabilitated rather than replaced. If you have a crossing five miles down the stream that's a modern bridge and can take modern loads, maybe the your historic bridge doesn't need to carry modern loads,” said Thompson.
'An object of beauty'
Arrindell criticized PennDOT’s focus on traffic capacity on state roads.
“It's not just transportation, that bridge was something that was part of our … community, and it was … an object of beauty. To just say, ‘Well, how many cars go over that?’ [As if] that makes it valuable. No … it’s the essence [of the bridge that matters.] And if you don't understand that, you don't understand community,” Arrindell said.
In the last 20 years, PennDOT removed 206 historic bridges, according to Arrindell.
She said she would be vehemently opposed to any mitigation measures that suggested putting up a sign by where the bridge once stood.
'A national loss'
Bridge activist Cynthia Nash said PennDOT should hold an international “ideas competition” for people to share ways to memorialize the bridge. She compared the loss to 9/11.
“I was part of the ideas competition for the World Trade Center Memorial. We had a huge loss there. That project began with an ideas competition, where people share their creativity and their visions within parameters about what should be an appropriate memorial for that extraordinary loss. The loss that has happened at Skinners Falls is certainly one for our community, but it is also a national loss, because the bridge was on the National Register of Historic Places,” Nash said.
Thompson replied that it is not unusual for PennDOT to have a design committee from the local community if it decides to build a new bridge in an historic area. She added that in her 17 years with PennDOT, she has never heard a group speak “so eloquently about what the bridge means to them as part of the sense of place in the community.”
PennDOT will develop a legal agreement with the Federal Highway Administration on what their next steps are for the bridge project. Thompson did not provide a timeline for the decision.
PennDOT reopened the Delaware River in Wayne County on May 2.
