On July 16, 1929, a bridge engineer with the Department of Highways – the precursor to PennDOT – approved the design of a bridge over the Swatara Creek. How long it took to build the bridge, what it replaced, and what it cost are not known.
While a search of Lebanon County newspapers didn’t yield that information, it did confirm that a bridge over the Swatara Creek at Union and Swatara townships existed before 1930 — which is the date PennDOT gives for the construction.
In those newspaper accounts, the bridge is variously named “Philips iron bridge” and “Phillips Bridge.” Bids were requested for painting the bridge in the 1920s and, in 1927, used planks from the Phillips bridge were advertised for sale in local newspapers.
There’s no mention of Phillips bridge in 1929 or 1930, but in a June 1930 story on the building of what likely is state Route 72, it is reported that “the piers on the big bridge over the Swatara are finished and the arches are being put up and are soon ready to pour the concrete.”
That “big bridge” is likely what PennDOT is replacing today.
Some kind of bridge crossing the Swatara Creek may well have existed even prior to that “big bridge,” although it is unclear if that was the Phillips iron bridge.
An 1875 map of Union Township shows a bridge across the Swatara in the vicinity of what today is state Route 72, said Shane Keenan, archivist for the Lebanon County Historical Society. The Swatara Township map of the same area doesn’t show the bridge but does show a road ending at the Swatara Creek. Same goes for an earlier 1860 map, which does show a bridge crossing below Jonestown over the Little Swatara Creek.
Read More: What can you find in this 1860 map of Lebanon County?
Neither map names the road although some newspaper stories from the 1930s referred to it as the Jonestown-Lebanon road.
“There likely was a predecessor to the SR 72 bridge, but there’s no way to confirm that for sure,” Keenan added.
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