Times Chronicle & Public Spirit
Why did Montgomery County lose its covered bridges?
Each year, visitors make a point of traveling to Bucks, Chester, and Lancaster counties to tour their scenic collections of covered bridges. Montgomery County, however, has not had a covered bridge in road service since 1956. So how did this happen?
In the past two years, I have made many public appearances speaking about covered bridges and this question comes up, to the point where I have just written a book about the extinction of Montgomery County’s 36 former covered bridges. In the end, Montgomery County’s commissioners allowed the demolition of their last bridge, as part of the Green Lane reservoir project, after pledging to preserve it a decade earlier.
The Markley’s Mill Covered Bridge had been in service since 1835 in Upper Hanover Township and managed to survive the floods, fires, and highway improvement projects that usually spelled doom for other covered bridges. Montgomery County was once a regional center of covered bridge building. The Flat Rock Covered Bridge at Lower Merion connecting to Manayunk was built in 1810, and it was the second covered bridge on the river.
In all, the Schuylkill River in Montgomery County had 14 large privately owned covered bridges. The Perkiomen Creek and other creeks in Montgomery County also had 18 covered bridges in service for roadways and railways. The longest bridge at 800 feet connected Bridgeport and Norristown. The DeKalb Street Covered Bridge had
a colorful history. In 1861, Civil War volunteers rioted on the bridge after its attendants tried to charge soldiers with tolls to cross the river. A political battle in the 1920s saw Lansdale Reporter editor Walter Sanborn lead an effort to stop the bridge’s replacement using county
funds. In 1924, arsonists then destroyed DeKalb Street Covered Bridge, but few residents complained since they wanted a modern bridge.
By 1937 only the Markley’s Mill Covered Bridge was left standing in the county. The Pennsylvania Department of Highways
(later known as PennDOT) had systematically bought and demolished the interior roadway bridges, while the Reading Railroad dropped its hybrid metal/wooden bridges by 1924. However, the Markley’s Mill Covered Bridge had a key ally, Judge Harold G. Knight, the president judge of the county courts. Knight also owned the farm that sat next to Markley’s Mill Covered Bridge.
In 1941, the county’s leaders repossessed the Markley’s Mill Covered Bridge from the state to save it from extinction. But after World War II, outside forces became involved. The Philadelphia Suburban Water Company had bought property in Upper Hanover to start a large dam project to supply water to more than 400,000 suburbanites, including steel workers in lower Bucks County.
The Friends of the Perkiomen, a local activist group that included residents and 16 local governments, fought in public and in the courts against the water company for five years. In 1955, Philadelphia Suburban pledged to move and preserve the covered bridge as part of a settlement. But Judge Knight’s neighbors
sued to keep open Knight Road, where the bridge sat, and they defeated Philadelphia Suburban in court. In cooperation with a new set of county commissioners, the water company promptly demolished Markley’s Mill Covered Bridge, citing a lack of money to preserve it.
In the following years, other counties saw a jump in cultural tourism as it became popular to tour covered bridges. Bucks County had 13 covered bridges, Chester County had 15 and Lancaster County had 28. In 1971, Montgomery County’s parks director Robert Rothenberger wrote to the Lehigh County’s commissioners asking them a favor — if they would donate one of their five covered bridges to Montgomery County. “In Montgomery County at one time there were many covered bridges, however, today there is not even one,” he pleaded. The commissioners declined his request.
Scott Bomboy is a local author and historian, and the chair of the Bucks County Covered Bridge Society. His latest book, “The Lost Covered Bridges of Montgomery County” is now available on Amazon.com.