Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: William Fischer, Jr.
Taken: “ ”
Caption: The Fox Creek "S" Bridge Park
Additional Description: The Fox Creek “S” Bridge is one of a series of such bridges which lined the path of the National Road. All but a handful were destroyed during the construction of U.S. Route 40. The National Road, completed here in 1828, “opened wide the doors to the West.” Every township crossed by the Road doubled its population in a decade. The entire National Road from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois, was bricked during World War I to accommodate military traffic. The Fox Creek “S” Bridge was the last section to be bricked. The photo below records this event in 1919.

The house at the top of the picture to the left is that of Robert West Speer, a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. Speer was a Reformed Presbyterian (Covenanter). His denomination, as well as the Associate Presbyterians (Seceders) and the Associate Reformed Presbyterians made the Fox Creek/Crooked Creek area a bastion of Abolitionism before and during the Civil War.
Submitted: November 6, 2008, by William Fischer, Jr. of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Database Locator Identification Number: p42668
File Size: 0.216 Megabytes

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