MORELAND TOWNSHIP -- PennDOT crews used a crane Tuesday morning to lift an 80,000-pound truss bridge over Little Muncy Creek in Lycoming County.
Among the changing leaves, an old bridge was replaced in a matter of minutes near Muncy.
The new green steel truss bridge was suspended in the air over Little Muncy Creek. A crane slowly moved the 80,000-pound structure while workers pulled it into place.
"It's amazing how they can pick up and move stuff like this," said Loretta Walis Raup.
PennDOT workers tell us most of the time a construction team will build the top of a bridge piece by piece. In this case, to save time the rebuilt steel bridge was moved by crane all at once.
"They don't do bridges like this in this part usually. We wanted to see history," said Walis Raup.
The bridge is somewhat of a landmark for one neighbor who stopped by with her husband to take pictures.
"It's definitely one that would hurt if it was closed. They did talk about closing, but people signed petitions and said, 'Hey, we need this bridge.'"
Newswatch 16 was here in April when crews started tearing down the original bridge that was over 100 years old.
This new bridge looks a lot like the original bridge. PennDOT did that on purpose because this structure meant a lot to the community.
"It looks just like, it looks very much like the original," said Walis Raup. "It just kind of keeps with the historic nature of the bridge here and the locality."
"One of the locals came to us at the beginning of the job and told us he had the original sign in his garage, so they gave to us so we had it repainted and reattached," said PennDOT project manager David Wise.
"We've been waiting probably four months for it to show up. It's really going to be an asset to the township," said Robert Raup.
Now that the skeleton of the bridge is in place, PennDOT employees tell us they expect the bridge will be open to traffic sometime next month.