page_title: James P. Kirkwood
section_title: Starrucca Viaduct
hierarchical_section_title: James P. Kirkwood / Work / Starrucca Viaduct
caption_attribution_description: English: The Starrucca Viaduct near Lanesboro, Pennsylvania, as seen in a photo from 1920. This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 75001665 More images
context_page_description: James Pugh Kirkwood was a 19th-century American civil engineer, and general superintendent of the Erie Railroad in the year 1849–1850. He left the Erie to go to the southwest to construct railroads, and he made the first survey for the Pacific Railroad west from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. Late 1860s he served as President of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
context_section_description: The Starrucca Viaduct was designed by Julius W. Adams and James P. Kirkwood and built in 1847-1848 by New York and Erie Railroad, of locally quarried random ashlar bluestone, except for three brick interior longitudinal spandrel walls and the concrete base portions of the piers and deck covering. This may have been the first structural use of concrete in American bridge construction.
  The viaduct was built to solve an engineering problem posed by the wide valley of Starrucca Creek. The railroad initially considered building an embankment, but abandoned the idea because it was impractical.  The Erie Railroad was well-financed by British investors, but even with money available, most American contractors at the time were incapable of the task.
  Julius W. Adams, the superintending engineer of construction in the area, hired James P. Kirkwood, a civil engineer who had previously worked on the Long Island Rail Road. Accounts differ as to whether Kirkwood worked on the bridge himself, or whether Adams was responsible for the plans with Kirkwood working as a subordinate. It took 800 workers, each paid about $1 per day, equal to $29.55 per day today, to complete the bridge in a year.  The falsework for the bridge required more than half a million feet of cored and hewn timbers.
caption: 1920 picture of the Starrucca Viaduct.
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