A contractor for Amtrak removed the final ruins of an 1866 rail bridge from the Susquehanna River last month, despite opposition bolstered by a startup that argued the 10 remnant piers should have stayed due to their historical proximity to the Underground Railroad.

In a news release last week, Amtrak hailed the removal of the final remnant piers last month as a critical early step in its $2.7 billion project to replace its current bridge, which was built in 1906, over the Susquehanna River.

Opponents who wanted to see the piers preserved described their demolition as wasteful spending to destroy what they described as monuments to a pivotal time in U.S. history.

The piers were left over in the Susquehanna from an older rail bridge that opened in 1866, shortly after the Civil War ended. The main structure of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Bridge was dismantled for scrap during World War II, though the piers remained in the water until being removed over the past several months.

Amtrak had argued that the 1866 bridge piers needed to be removed to begin work on the “megaproject” of building a new bridge, which the federal passenger rail corporation says will enable high-speed rail at top speeds of 160 mph.

The railroad also claimed that the derelict piers were an “impediment to boaters,” and there was little objection to removing the piers throughout a yearslong planning and review process.”

But as construction work began, starting with the demolition of the 1866 piers earlier this year, some vocal opposition, bolstered by rail startup with ambitious plans to privatize Amtrak’s busy Northeast Corridor, demanded a halt to their removal.

Some officials in Harford and Cecil counties joined AmeriStarRail’s call for the piers to remain intact, echoing the rail startup’s cofounder, Scott Spencer, in arguing that the piers were historically significant and tied to the Underground Railroad.

Despite the rail bridge opening after Maryland abolished slavery and the end of the Civil War, Spencer argued that the piers bore “silent witness” to enslaved people on the final steps of their final journey across the Mason-Dixon Line to freedom while under construction. He also said its completion after the Civil War symbolized the unity of the North and the South and provided transportation to newly free Black Americans.

Spencer said Monday that he was “saddened” by the destruction of the pilings, which he called the “largest group of surviving structures that were related to the Underground Railroad and the Civil War.”

Several experts on local Underground Railroad activity interviewed by The Baltimore Sun said they couldn’t see a solid connection between the bridge piers and the Underground Railroad, noting that enslaved people mostly crossed the Susquehanna River by boat and that construction of the bridge had little overlap with slavery in Maryland.

The state found in a 2006 preservation review that while the pilings had a “unique history” related to 19th-century transportation, they lacked historic integrity as the bridge’s entire superstructure had been removed.

Public input during Amtrak’s review process favored clearing the piers from the landscape. And a review during the decade of planning for a new rail bridge found little connection between the pilings and the Underground Railroad, which mainly involved enslaved people crossing the Susquehanna by ferry on the journey to freedom.

The National Park Service has already designated a ferry landing site on the east side as part of their Network to Freedom due to its well-documented history of Underground Railroad activity.

Spencer’s firm had pitched its own bi-level replacement to Amtrak’s bridge. That plan, conceived after a decade of planning for Amtrak’s replacement project, would have left the piers intact and was supported by Perryville’s mayor and commissioners.

Spencer said Amtrak’s reasoning for removing the piers was “misleading” because they were not necessary for the new bridge’s construction or in the way of boaters, and described their destruction as “an unfortunate example of wasteful spending.”

He said money spent on demolition could have gone to critical infrastructure like securing tracks to avoid train fatalities like two seen last week.

Some of the opposition to the piers being removed came too late. Spencer shared a letter he received from the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture expressing the state commission’s “strong support” for halting demolition.

The letter, penned by commission chair Maya Davis, was dated last Thursday, after the pilings had been removed.

“Preserving these piers is essential for honoring the legacy of those who risked everything for freedom, commemorating the resilience and courage of those before us,” Davis wrote.

Amtrak said in a statement that it had salvaged “some original stones from a few piers” and delivered them to municipal officials in Havre de Grace and Perryville. The stone blocks were made of locally sourced granite from the nearby Port Deposit quarry, the rail corporation said.

The project team, including Amtrak contractor Fay Construction, had also installed bird deterrent nets on the piers to avoid disrupting the nesting of migratory species, they said. Major construction on the new bridge is expected to begin in mid-to-late 2025, Amtrak said.

Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.