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The Last Raft Memorial Bridge
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The Last Raft Memorial Bridge lets people enter and leave Muncy over Route 405. The name itself seems rather interesting as rafts are not typically used as a mode of transportation on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. Usually only small boats like canoes, kayaks, rowboats and the occasional motorboat see use on this waterway.
The reason for the name has more to do with a sad moment in the history of the Williamsport area, than modes of transportation used on the river. Although many people associate coal with Pennsylvania, neither the Williamsport area nor the Susquehanna Valley relied on this industry as a primary source of commerce. Agriculture was the primary industry of the Susquehanna Valley and it remains so to this day. The Williamsport area relied on logging for most of the Nineteenth Century and the early part of the twentieth.
The logging industry declined sometime after World War I, but log rafts still occasionally went down the river. The last raft down the Susquehanna sailed, if sailed can be the right term, in 1938. When the raft hit Muncy, it collided with a pier that resulted in the deaths of seven people.
In more modern times, the journey may have stopped, but the raft continued its journey until it reached its final destination. (According to newspaper clippings, this continued the tradition that the rafts always completed their journey regardless of deaths or injury along the way.)
The raft started with 48 people on board. Among those who died were the pilot of the craft who tried to avert the accident. The crash happened over eighty years ago, but the event was important enough to be immortalized in the name of a bridge over Route 405. The author personally wondered what the significance of the name was and found an interesting bit of local history.
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