Location(s)

This tablet erected in 1928 by the Blair County Historical Society of Pennsylvania to perpetuate the Skew Arch.  Built 1832-33 to carry the Huntingdon-Blairsville Section of the modern turnpike over Inclined Plane No. 6 of the Allegheny Portage Railroad.  (Plymouth Snyder, member of the Pennsylvania Legislature and President of the Blair County Historical Society in the early 20^th century)

            America in 1929 was once again on the verge of technological transformation.  The factories of the United States were responsible for one-third of the industrial production of the world.  Each week, 115 million Americans filled the movie theaters where they say newsreels documenting great achievements, including the construction of the Empire State Building in New York City, the discovery of the wonder drug penicillin, and the flights of Amelia Earhart.  It was just 1928 that women competed in the Olympics for the first time, and now a woman was flying across the Atlantic Ocean.  As Americans were “Singin’ in the Rain,” and “Tiptoe[ing] through the Tulips,” they thought the sky was the limit.  It was the perfect time to look back and appreciate just how far they’d come.  So, on that first Saturday in October, 1929, a group of state politicians, historians, and officials from the Pennsylvania Railroad assembled along Plane 6 of the old Allegheny Portage Railroad.  No one suspected that before the month was out, fortunes would be reversed, businesses would fail, and the nation would be plunged into its deepest economic depression.

            On that autumn afternoon, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Middle Division band played, everyone sang “America,” important men made important remarks, and then, with a flourish, the new monument to the APRR was unveiled.  It stood ten feet tall, and was build of stone sleepers from the Summit Level.  Its bronze tablets provided an image and summary of the history of the railroad.  It had been almost 75 years since the railroad closed, and time had been kind to the memory of the APRR.

            It was no accident that this illustrious group had chosen a spot near the Skew Arch Bridge for their monument to the railroad.  The bridge was itself a monument, the most obvious and accessible artifact remaining of the APRR.  Located along the busy William Penn Highway, just below the summit on the eastern slope of the Allegheny Front, the bridge was a well known landmark.

            Construction of the Skew Arch Bridge was completed in 1833.  The bridge carried the Huntingdon, Cambria & Indiana Turnpike (also known as the Northern Turnpike) across Plane 6.  Its construction presented a special challenge to the engineers.  Typically, the site of a proposed bridge or viaduct was graded level prior to construction.  On the steep slope of the Allegheny Front, this was not an option.  Not only did the bridge have to defy gravity on the steep slope, it also had to accommodate the intersection of the turnpike and the plane, which were not perpendicular to each other.  For a typical bridge, the deck of the bridge and the surface it spanned paralleled each other and crossed at right angles.  The bridge needed a flat deck to carry the turnpike traffic over the sloped roadbed of the inclined plane.  The two roads crossed each other obliquely, not only horizontally, but also vertically.  To accommodate all these non-right angles, the bridge was “skewed.”

            The engineers designed a stone bridge that accounted for all these skewed vertical and horizontal angles.  Some very skilled stone cutters and masons executed their design in the native sandstone flawlessly.  The Skew Arch Bridge has stood for more almost 170 years, needing only minor repairs.

            The foot of Plane 6, below the Skew Arch Bridge, now lies buried beneath the eastbound (downhill) lanes of the William Penn Highway (old Route 22).