Kinzua Bridge State Park, Hamlin and Keating Townships, Pennsylvania

     The original Kinzua railway bridge or Kinzua Viaduct was built in 1882.  The viaduct spanned the Kinzua Gorge.  At the time it was built, this viaduct was the highest and longest railway bridge in the world.  Loads became larger, and trains became heavier; so the bridge was rebuilt in 1900. Commercial rail traffic stopped on the bridge in the 1960's, and the State of Pennsylvania turned the viaduct and the surrounding area into a state park which opened in 1970.  The Knox and Kane Railroad operated sight seeing trips on the bridge beginning in 1987 and ending in 2002, when the span was closed for another restoration.  A tornado tore through the park on July 21, 2003, and it toppled 11 of the 20 towers holding up the bridge.  In 2011, the bridge was reinvented as a sky walk.  Kinzua Bridge State Park is open everyday from sunrise until sunset.   Admission is free.

The lobby of the visitor center features copies of the bridge towers.  This fellow is hard at work near the ceiling.

This is a picture of some of the men who worked on the original 1882 bridge.  Check out the guy with the lunch pail. 

Doesn't he look a little bit like Clark Gable?

The sky walk is 600 feet long and 301 feet high.

Nine towers remain standing.

One area of the observation platform has a glass floor.

The flattened towers are exactly as they were after the 2003 tornado.  The tornado was an F-1 on the Fujita Tornado Damage Scale.  That means winds were 73-112 miles per hour.  Damage was moderate (roofs peel off, mobile homes can blow off foundations, and cars can blow off roads).  Follow the link to learn more about the Fujita Scale:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f-scale.html

I had to hang on to my hat.  The winds whip through the Kinzua Gorge.  When trains crossed the bridge, they had to slow to five miles per hour.  Look at the rails.  There are four rails, not two.  The train started out on the two inner rails.  If the train blew off the rails, the second outer set of rails caught it, and it kept rolling.

The towers fell during the tornado because the bolts holding the metal to the concrete bases had rusted.   It was estimated that the towers swayed 4-5 times before the bolts snapped.

The Kinzua Creek runs at the bottom of the gorge.

The hike around the bottom of the gorge was nice.  We needed a few breaks to catch our breath on the way back to the top.

You have to respect the forces of nature,