Plunketts Creek Bridge No. 3

Plunketts Creek Bridge No. 3 was a rubble masonry stone arch bridge. It was built between 1840 and 1875, when the road along the creek between the unincorporated villages of Barbours and Proctor was constructed. A record flood on January 21, 1996, severely damaged the bridge, and it was demolished in March 1996. A replacement bridge was built and the old stone structure was documented by the Historic American Engineering Record.

About Plunketts Creek Bridge No. 3 in brief

Plunketts Creek Bridge No. 3 was a rubble masonry stone arch bridge. It was built between 1840 and 1875, probably closer to 1840, when the road along the creek between the unincorporated villages of Barbours and Proctor was constructed. The bridge was 75 feet long, with an arch that spanned 44 feet, a deck 18 feet 8 inches wide, and a roadway width of 15 feet 3 inches. It carried a single lane of traffic. In the 19th century, the bridge and its road were used by the lumber, leather, and coal industries. By the early 20th century these industries had almost entirely left, and the villages declined. A record flood on January 21, 1996, severely damaged the bridge, and it was demolished in March 1996. A replacement bridge was built and the old stone structure was documented by the Historic American Engineering Record. Plunketts creek is named for Colonel William Plunkett, a physician, who was the first president judge of Northumberland County after it was formed in 1772. He led a Pennsylvania expedition in the Pennamite-Yankee War to forcibly remove settlers from Connecticut, who had claimed and settled on lands in the Wyoming Valley also claimed by Pennsylvania. He died in 1791, aged about 100, and was buried in Northumberlands without a grave marker or monument. Lycoming County was formed from NorthumberLAND County in 1795. The original name proposed for the township was \”Plunkett Township\”, but some believed his loyalty lay with the British Empire.

The lingering suspicion of his loyalist sympathies led to the proposed name being rejected. Naming the township for the creek rather than its namesake was seen as an acceptable compromise. In 1832, John Barbour built a sawmill on the mouth of Plunkets Creek. This developed into a village known as Barbours Mills, today known as Loyles Mills. In 1840, a road was built north from Barbours to Coal Mine Hollow. This is the earliest possible date for construction of the surviving county road docket on the bridge. The road was used by lumber, coal and sawmills that were active in the early 19th and 20th centuries during the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is the only surviving bridge on the county road that was built for the construction of this road, but neither the county docket nor the bridge mention the construction for the bridge for neither the bridge nor the road for the bridges for the same period. The area the bridge served reverted mostly to second growth forest and it is used to access Pennsylvania State Game Lands and a state pheasant farm. The first settlement along the Creek by European colonists took place between 1770 and 1776. The creek is in the West Branch Susquehanna River drainage basin, the earliest recorded inhabitants of which were theSusquehannocks. Their numbers were greatly reduced by disease and warfare with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, and by 1675 they had died out, moved away.

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