YORK COUNTY, Pa. — The York County Board of Commissioners on Thursday announced that the renovation of the Slate Hill Bridge, a 122-year-old structure that spans the Yellow Breeches Creek between York and Cumberland counties, has been completed.
York County President Commissioner Julie Wheeler, along with Commissioners Doug Hoke and Ron Smith, recently attended a ribbon-cutting to commemorate the reopening of the bridge, which over many years sustained water damage and impairment by continued use of high-vehicle traffic.
That the bridge showed signs of wear over the years is not surprising, since the original structure was meant to carry horse-and-carriage traffic over the creek, the commissioners said.
“Nine of the 90 bridges (York County maintains), we share with Cumberland County,” Wheeler said this week. “Slate Hill Road Bridge is one of those nine. Cumberland County is a great neighbor, and the renovation of Slate Hill Road is an example of how two counties collaborated to renovate a historic bridge and improve public safety in our combined communities.”
John Klinedinst, Chief Administrative Officer of CS Davidson, the York-based engineering company that managed the project, thanked the commissioners for their involvement.
“I think it came out really nicely,” he said.
Rehabilitation work on a second 100-plus-year-old bridge, Bridge 226, on Hull Drive in Washington Township, was completed in 2020, according to Logan Swartz of CS Davidson.
More recently, the project won an award, he said.
“We submitted it to the Association for Bridge Construction and Design’s Susquehanna Chapter Awards Program, which evaluates projects on technical merit, context-sensitive solutions, innovation and constructability and I’m honored to announce that the project won the award,” Swartz said.
In contrast to the Stone Hill Road Bridge’s stone construction, Bridge 226 is primarily an iron, whose two trusses were built in the late 1800s in Ohio and transported to Pennsylvania in 1917, he said.
