"I'm glad it's safely on the ground."”

Mike Conway, PennDot Inspector

SKINNERS FALLS – It took but three strong taps with the bucket of an excavator, and the New York span of the 123-year-old Skinners Falls Bridge fell to earth, landing quietly on the causeway built for that purpose at 9:16 yesterday morning.

As construction workers, PennDot employees, and nearly a dozen local residents looked on, the operator of the excavator drove his machine up the New York ramp to within 30 feet of the bridge.

Then, using hard taps with the bucket, he loosened the stone abutment until the bridge was hanging by a thread. He then took the bucket and hit the span, approximately 10 feet up, knocking it off its perch, where the bridge had stood since 1902.

“I’m glad it’s safely on the ground,” Mike Conway, the PennDot Inspector, who is overseeing the demolition of the bridge, said. 

When asked if he was surprised how quickly the bridge fell, Conway said, ‘It certainly did [come down easy]. Sometimes it’s hard to know how it will come down.”

Conway said workmen will now start taking the fallen structure away, saving some pieces “for cultural resources and the rest will be scrapped.”

He said PennDot will continue by doing an analysis on the pier and abutment which holds up the Pennsylvania span of the bridge and expects that side to come down on Monday morning.

He said that span of the bridge would be dropped into the Delaware River “because we could not close the entire river [with a causeway].”

Several residents and organizations had tried to stop the demolition work from being completed by filing a complaint last week, but the project went on, as planned, yesterday.