Today and throughout this week, public television premieres a new documentary by Ken Burns about America’s National Parks. In honor of the series, WPSU takes a look at one of the many state parks in Pennsylvania – Kinzua Bridge State Park in McKean County, which features a 19th century engineering marvel.
Holly Dzemyan headed down a path to a shady platform that overlooks the crisscrossed steel latticework of the Kinzua Bridge.
"A lot of people say that the bridge was an engineering masterpiece," Dzemyan told a tour group.
Dzemyan wears a tan state park uniform. She’s the Environmental Education Specialist for Kinzua Bridge State Park. She explained that when the bridge was built in 1882 it was the tallest, longest railroad bridge in the world. But it was built for a very practical reason.
"They were trying to be competitive at that time and get their coal to market as soon as they could. That’s why this bridge was just a great thing for them to have. It’s a straight shot across there. No winding down and up another hill," Dzemyan said.
Civil War General Thomas Kane commissioned the bridge. (The nearby borough of Kane is also named after him.) But it wasn’t long before trains became too heavy for the bridge.
"They decided to change the towers from the iron towers to steel. And those are the steel towers you see out there right now, of 1900," Dzemyan said.
The bridge was used to haul freight until 1959, when it was sold to a salvage company for scrap. But when the owner of the salvage company, Nick Kovalchick, saw the bridge, Dzemyan says he changed his mind.
"And the gentleman that was the owner of the salvage company just didn’t think it was right to tear it down [for scrap]," Dzemyan said.
Instead, Kovalchick sold the bridge to the state of Pennsylvania in 1963 to become a state park. The bridge attracted more than 200,000 visitors a year until 2003, when the bridge was hit by a tornado. Now just a short section of the bridge juts out over the massive gorge it used to span.
"30 seconds, and then it was gone," Kilmer said.
Earl Kilmer lives a few miles away. He opens his garage door to shed some light on a wall covered in painted objects: the Kinzua Bridge on a tabletop, on handsaws, on a piece of the bridge. And the bridge is always intact.
"This is the only painting with the bridge down," Kilmer points to one painting turned to the wall. "I won’t show this to anybody. I don’t turn it around. It has the bridge down on the other side."
Kilmer was a maintenance man at the Kinzua Bridge Park for more than 30 years. He was working the day the tornado hit.
"I was going from one building to the other. I turned and I seen it go black. It happened [CLAP]. It isn’t like a movement in slow motion, you know. It comes so fast, and I looked and there it was and underneath the desk I am. And everything comes down real fast and I can’t get my legs underneath. And thank God I can still walk, you know?" Kilmer said.
He lay trapped under that desk for two hours, with his legs gone numb, before he was rescued.
Another character in the history of the Kinzua Bridge is 94-year-old Odo Valentine. At his son’s banquet hall in St. Marys, he wears a white cowboy hat and aviator glasses with a propeller on the nosepiece. Back in 1939, as a flight student, Valentine decided to try a stunt. He flew his small plane UNDER the bridge...sideways. He points to the picture a friend took that day.
"They said there’s no use going under the bridge unless you have a picture of it. Cause if you would tell anybody you went under a bridge, you couldn’t prove it," Valentine said.
Valentine had his proof. Then he heard the FAA wanted to take away the stunt pilot’s license. And the bridge owners were threatening to sue. So Valentine kept his feat quiet…for almost 70 years.
Then three weeks ago, he dusted off his wings for a special fly-by over the fallen Bridge during one of Dzemyan’s park talks.
"We went up there and we flew by there about four times, put on a little show for her," Valentine said.
Valentine said he flew the first pass, about 50 feet above the fallen bridge, before his co-pilot took over.
He said, "There’s an old saying, 'To fly you don’t have to be crazy, but it helps a little.'”
Soon you’ll be able to come close to that perspective. A viewing platform on the remaining end of the bridge—with a Plexiglass floor—will let visitors look straight down, more than 200 feet to the fallen towers.
Dzemyan says she thinks visitors will really like it.
"Some people will get quite a thrill over it. I will be one, I tell ya," Dzemyan said.
That observation platform is scheduled to open in the fall of 2010.
