Are bridge piers in the Susquehanna a hindrance or ‘national treasure’? How a demolition debate got ignited.

The fate of the piers for a long-gone Civil War-era railroad bridge across the Susquehanna River appears to be certain as work to remove them is underway. But a rail startup that says it could build a better bridge has gained allies in a campaign to halt their demolition.

The effort comes as Amtrak starts work on a long-awaited replacement to its Susquehanna River Bridge , a 1906 structure that the federal passenger rail corporation said “has reached the end of its useful life.” Construction on the new, $2.7 billion bridge connecting Havre de Grace and Perryville started this month after more than a decade of planning. Crews were removing the nearby ruins of the P.W. & B. Railroad Bridge, an older crossing that was dismantled for scrap during World War II, on Thursday.

AmeriStarRail, whose ambitious plans to privatize Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor have been rejected by government officials , is waging a public campaign seeking to keep the piers, which the Delaware-based startup and its proponents say should stay due to their historical proximity to the Underground Railroad. The rail firm’s chief operating officer, Scott Spencer, said he wants the state to order Amtrak to halt demolition so they can be preserved as the “Underground Railroad Monuments of Freedom” to commemorate the end of slavery.

But you won’t find any references to the remnant piers in a new exhibit on local Underground Railroad activity at the nearby Havre de Grace Maritime Museum. Experts said they haven’t seen documentation linking the bridge that the piers once supported and the network that led enslaved people to freedom — slavery had been abolished, and the Civil War had ended by the time the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad opened the bridge in 1866.

Spencer, backed by a handful of local leaders and academics, argues that the piers still bore witness to an era of significant change for Black Americans while the bridge was under construction and once it was finished.

A spokesperson for Amtrak said the old piers are an impediment to boaters and must be removed for construction to start. Officials conducted an environmental study that included a section on Underground Railroad operations on the Susquehanna before the war and the bridge being built. Amtrak also consulted with state officials, who found that the state-owned piers were not in good enough condition for preservation. And the public input they received favored clearing the piers from the landscape.

All 10 of the piers are slated to be demolished by the end of 2024, and construction of the two new bridges is expected to begin in 2025, with the current bridge being destroyed once a west span is up around 2031. The second span is expected to be finished in 2036.

Spencer’s startup has pitched a privately funded, bi-level span over the Susquehanna, which would keep the 1866 piers intact and repurpose the 1906 bridge as a pedestrian trail. But the firm’s various proposals to partner with Amtrak on privately funded projects have not been met with much enthusiasm.

In a cease-and-desist letter Wednesday to Amtrak, Spencer alleged the passenger railroad has “conducted an effort to discredit” the firm’s private-sector improvement proposals. He also called for a halt to the planned demolition of the piers, which he called unnecessary and wasteful.

Rejected by Amtrak on its privatization bids, the startup has started to air its views publicly. In a Thursday interview, Spencer said his firm is working on private ventures while still pursuing its goal of partnering with Amtrak to make “dramatic” changes to the Northeast Corridor. He called the 1866 piers “national treasures” and said his push to persuade Maryland officials to force Amtrak to stop demolition work in the Susquehanna was a simple effort to do the right thing.

Historians who have researched Underground Railroad activity in Maryland noted that train infrastructure was critical to northbound freedom seekers, who would follow rails or ride as passengers. But they said they hadn’t seen any documentation of a clear link between the P.W. & B. bridge and the path to freedom.

Anthony Cohen, a historian who founded the Maryland-based Underground Railroad legacy nonprofit The Menare Foundation, said that although railroads like the P.W. & B. line were central in the journey to freedom, he couldn’t see how the 1866 piers themselves would have assisted.

Before the bridge opened in 1866, railcars would stop in Havre de Grace before cargo was taken across the Susquehanna by ferry — a route that numerous enslaved people, including Frederick Douglass, took on their journeys north across the nearby Mason-Dixon Line. The environmental assessment for the bridge replacement project, released in 2017, detailed how “the customary route” across the Susquehanna for people seeking freedom in Pennsylvania was by boat — Underground Railroad agents would light a fire on the Havre de Grace shoreline to notify agents on the Perryville side to cross over.

The National Park Service has designated the ferry landing site on the east side, in Perryville, as part of their Network to Freedom due to its well-documented history of Underground Railroad activity. Spencer hopes he can do the same for the piers, which were built during the war.

Spencer said that while under construction during the final years of slavery in Maryland, the bridge piers were a “silent witness” to enslaved people traveling toward freedom. Once built, the bridge symbolized the newly reunited nation’s accomplishments by connecting north and south, and provided newly freed Black Americans with work, he said. Douglass would later, as a free man, travel across the bridge multiple times while it was part of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.

“When I discuss this with people, they see [the piers] in a different light,” Spencer said.

Earlier this year, his effort garnered the support of then-Perryville Mayor Matt Roath, who sent letters in May backing Spencer’s bridge proposal and asking Maryland officials to order Amtrak to halt demolition work. Roath was defeated by Michelle Linkey in the town’s mayoral election this year.

Stacey Patton, a research associate at Morgan State University, called the bridge piers “monuments to the resilience and courage of those who sought freedom” in a Wednesday news release from AmeriStarRail. Ted Evgeniadis, who directs the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association, said in a statement that rather than demolition, improvements should be made to keep them intact.

There was some discussion about preservation during the lengthy environmental review process for the new bridge project. A local advisory board asked for some pieces of the current bridge to be retained for a historical display but called for the piers to be removed from the water to eliminate clutter and enhance the view.

At one point, transportation officials considered reusing the piers, possibly for a bicycle trail, but ultimately decided it wasn’t feasible due to their poor condition.

Although the piers aren’t located where the new bridge will be, Amtrak maintains that it is necessary to remove them for construction — Spencer disagrees with that assessment — as they build a new structure. The new bridge will double the rail capacity and allow for trains to travel up to 160 mph and improve MARC commuter and freight services, according to Amtrak.

“This project — and the more than 12 million annual rail passengers who rely on it for their travel between each city and town along the Northeast Corridor — cannot wait,” Amtrak spokesperson Kyle Anderson said.

Excavators remove submerged pieces of one of the stone piers that remain from the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Bridge over the Susquehanna River. Amtrak plans to remove the stone piers by the end of 2024 to make room for a replacement to the Susquehanna rail bridge currently in use. (Jerry Jackson/Staff)