Tunkhannock Viaduct: A Wonder of Concrete
Near Scranton, Pennsylvania
If you look toward Tunkhannock Creek from the right angle, you can still see one of the most ambitious feats of concrete construction in American history.
The Tunkhannock Viaduct opened in nineteen fifteen on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. At two thousand three hundred seventy-five feet long and two hundred forty feet above the creek below, it was the largest reinforced concrete structure ever built at the time. It formed the centerpiece of a nearly forty-mile railroad realignment between Clarks Summit and Hallstead, a project designed to eliminate steep grades and sharp curves that slowed freight.
The novelist Theodore Dreiser saw it and called it one of the true wonders of the world. It is still standing, still carrying trains, and still recognized as a landmark of early concrete engineering. It was built to last, and it has.
