When Veterans Memorial Bridge opened in 1930, there was a toll booth on the Wrightsville side of the Susquehanna River that collected 5 cents from every car passing it, coming from or going to Columbia.

"My dad had cousins in York," recalls Stan Buch, "and it was a thrill for me as a little kid to be able to cross it twice whenever our Sunday drive took us to visit those cousins."

Recently announced plans to renovate the historic Route 462 bridge prompted Buch, of Manor Township, to recall early crossings of the span.

Buch's father drove a 4-door Franklin motor car across the bridge. It had broad running boards and spare tires mounted on each front fender.

"If I had that car today," Buch notes, "I could retire to my own personal island."

If he had that car today, Buch could drive it back and forth across the bridge for nothing.

Bridge promoters don't plan to reinstate a toll booth to help pay for renovations. They are seeking state and federal economic stimulus funds for the bridge, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Among changes will be new streetlights, pedestrian walkway improvements and reconstruction of the plazas at either end of the structure.

It is an unusually attractive bridge,  even in its present condition, with one major failing.

High concrete sides make driving and river-watching incompatible. Drivers who want to see the river must cross on the Route 30 bridge upstream.

At the time the span was built, by the way, it was known as the longest concrete arch bridge in the world. It is 7,374 feet long, with 28 arches — sufficient to cross the mile-wide river and extend a solid distance on either side.

Every previous bridge built at that point also was known as the longest in the world.

The longest concrete bridge replaced the longest iron truss bridge, which replaced the longest covered bridge.

Any bridge crossing the lower Susquehanna would be among the longest river crossings in the world because the lower Susquehanna is among the widest  rivers in the world.

One of the shallowest.

One of the rockiest.

And one of the widest.


Buried five feet underground?


Galen Musser has responded to the April 24 column about John Sutter with an old story about Sutter's plot in the Moravian cemetery at Lititz.

"I have heard the story that Mr. Sutter gave instructions to have a six-foot wall around his burial plot," Musser writes. "Evidently the persons operating the cemetery didn't think that a six-foot wall would be appropriate, so they sank it five feet."

So a wall only one-foot tall — tip of the iceberg, so to speak — seems to surround Sutter's grave.

Truth or legend?

"That is the oral history," observes Jen Englehart, museum coordinator for the Lititz Historical Foundation. "There's no way to prove it."

Lititz Moravian Church obviously did not want a high wall in its low-key graveyard, Englehart says, so the existing wall fits the design. But nobody knows about the other five feet.

"There's no way to know except for digging him up to find out if that story is true," says Englehart.

Whether it's truth or folklore, it makes a good story.

But let's let the old gent rest in peace.


Jack Brubaker can be reached at jbrubaker@LNPnews.com or 291-8781. The Scribbler column appears Tuesdays and Fridays.