Alexander Spring Creek Rail Bridge

Alexander Spring Creek Rail Bridge. Cumberland Valley Rail Trail. , Alexander Spring Creek emerges from the ground as a limestone spring three miles south of the bridge. It is designated a PA Cold Water and Migratory Fishery. The creek empties into the Conodoguinet Creek less than a mile north of the trail. The Cumberland Valley Railroad first passed over the creek in 1837. At that time the Carlisle-to-Newville trip took 50 minutes. The last train crossed the bridge in 1981., The sandstone bridge was built in 1902 by Italian stonemasons to replace an earlier bridge destroyed in that year's record spring flooding. Designed to carry two sets of tracks for passenger and freight trains as part of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, up to a dozen passenger trains would cross daily. By 1928, when it was part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the bridge saw as many as twenty passenger trains per day., French Pete Yorlet , Peter Yorlet died of a heart attack August 25, 1902, (at age 75) while carrying water to workmen on the bridge. Known as French Pete, he was born in Bordeaux, France, in 1827. Records indicate that he was a veteran of the Crimean War and also served in the Union Army during the Civil War. He is buried in the Bear Graveyard on Creek Rd. (near Bears Rd.) north and west of Plainfield, PA. An inscription on one of the stones under the bridge tells part of his tory.