BY ROBERT L. BAKER
Times-Shamrock Writer

When the Nicholson Bridge opened for train traffic in the fall of 1915, Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad officials hailed it as the “Ninth Wonder of the World.”

Rising out of nothing more than a sketch plan of how the railroad might save money by eliminating some sharp grades, the monster bridge — also known as the Tunkhannock Viaduct — was just a small part of a $12 million effort known as the Clarks Summit-to-Hallstead cutoff.

The late historian Garford Williams attributed the Nicholson Examiner in 1910 as the first to give public notice that something major was about to happen, but also noted that few locals had an inkling of what was actually being considered.

The DL&W was engaged in a Lackawanna cutoff project to lower the cost of transporting coal from Scranton to Hoboken, New Jersey. The new DL&W cut-off project was engaged in getting coal and other local commodities more efficiently north to Buffalo, New York.

Abraham Burton Cohen was in his 20s, just out of college at Purdue University, when the DL&W hired him as a draftsman. In 1908, he gave the public a first look at his penchant for arches when he designed a railroad bridge across the Delaware River that can still be seen from Interstate 80.

The following year, Cohen designed the Paulins Kill Viaduct in New Jersey. It became the largest reinforced concrete bridge in the world until the Martin’s Creek Viaduct was finished in the spring of 1915. The Nicholson Bridge dwarfed it when it was completed in September of that year.

Cohen’s grandson, Bob Wagner, of Summit, New Jersey, was in Nicholson this spring to tell attendees at a Nicholson Women’s Club meeting about how his grandfather loved the challenge of creating these engineering feats. Wagner, now 73, said his grandfather loved bridges and was inspired by the famous Pont du Gard bridge near Nîmes, in the south of France.

The Pont du Gard bridge never served train traffic, but was similar in construction although it had three tiers of arches with the top one serving as an aqueduct for moving water. Cohen’s own “big” bridge at Nicholson would be more than double the French bridge in length.

Half a mile long and 100 feet higher than the Brooklyn Bridge, the Nicholson Bridge was to be the DL&W’s showpiece. It hired architect William Hull Botsford to sharply define some of the lines and internal arches within arches. Botsford submitted his final designs for the viaduct just before leaving on a trip to Egypt, Turkey and Europe to study unique architectural details. He planned to return to the U.S. just six weeks before the big bridge project was scheduled to solicit bids in 1912.

Botsford was in England and had decided to sail home as a second-class passenger on the ill-fated RMS Titanic. His body was never recovered. The news was devastating to the DL&W, but. Cohen had hand-drawn sketches from Botsford that were incorporated in the final design.

The Nicholson Bridge comprises 168,805 cubic yards of concrete poured into nine piers and two abutments. Its total length is 2,230 feet.

The Contractor, a trade journal of the time, said: “Unquestionably, this viaduct is the largest single piece of concrete masonry ever attempted in railroad building.”

John Waltz and Philip Reece are the only known original contractors who stayed in Nicholson after the bridge was completed in 1915, when they took over the Lackawanna Cutlery Co. Waltz died in 1919; Reece in 1930. Both are buried in the Nicholson Cemetery, where on Friday a memorial wreath service will recognize the roughly 500 workers who had a hand in the bridge’s construction.

The old DL&W railroad line, 33 miles long, was sold to the state for $1, and evolved into U.S. Route 11, also known as the Lackawanna Trail.

As for the Nicholson Bridge, Wagner said he was pretty sure his grandfather had crossed it many times, but Wagner never had the opportunity to spend time with his grandfather in shadow of what he lovingly called “Burt’s Bridge.” Coming around the corner on Route 11 up from Factoryville and seeing the bridge still gives him goosebumps, Wagner said.

Members of the Nicholson Heritage Association and Nicholson Women’s Group are looking forward to Wagner’s return next weekend. They are expecting him to ride atop a float that will recreate Abraham Burton Cohen’s office in the bridge centennial parade on Saturday afternoon.