What to See in Ohiopyle - Top Sights and Attractions

Bridge. The Ohiopyle Low Bridge is a structure that carries the Great Allegheny Passage trail across the Youghiogheny River in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania.

The span was originally opened in 1912 as part of the last major railroad constructed in Pennsylvania. It served the Western Maryland Railway's expansion from Cumberland, Maryland to Connellsville, Pennsylvania and was one of two bridges to cross a meandering section of the Yough in Ohiopyle. The original deck girder bridge was located near the center of the tiny community of Ohiopyle and opened the rugged region to tourism.

By the 1960s, the importance of the Low Bridge had been dramatically reduced. The automobile had replaced the train as the method of transportation to what was now Ohiopyle State Park, and the narrow clearance of Pennsylvania Route 381's passage under the bridge would lead to bottlenecks during the summer tourism season. The Western Maryland Railway was incorporated into the Chessie System holding company and saw traffic greatly reduced on ancillary lines; in 1975, all service west of Hancock, Maryland was eliminated.

Following the closure of the line, a portion of the old bridge was removed to allow for better truck access along PA 381, while the remainder of the structure sat vacant until its incorporation into the Great Allegheny Passage. In 1999, a new bowstring truss bridge was opened on the existing piers of its predecessor. The new bridge is the longest of its type in Pennsylvania.^[1]

Historical landmark in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. Fallingwater is a house designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939 in the Laurel Highlands of southwest Pennsylvania, about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The house was built partly over a waterfall on Bear Run in the Mill Run section of Stewart Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, located in the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains. The house was designed as a weekend home for Liliane and Edgar J. Kaufmann, the owner of Pittsburgh's Kaufmann's Department Store.

After its completion, Time called Fallingwater Wright's "most beautiful job" and it is listed among Smithsonian's "Life List of 28 Places to See Before You Die". The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. In 1991, members of the American Institute of Architects named Fallingwater the "best all-time work of American architecture" and in 2007, it was ranked 29th on the list of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA.

The house and seven other Wright constructions were inscribed as a World Heritage Site under the title "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright" in July 2019.^[2]

Girder bridge. The Ohiopyle Highway Bridge is a structure that carries two lanes of Pennsylvania Route 381 Youghiogheny River in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania

The span, which opened in 1975, is the third to be located in the vicinity. An original 19th-century covered bridge was replaced by a Pratt truss bridge around 1900. Because of a low-clearance underpass located directly adjacent to its southern approach, this structure proved to be obsolete once the automobile replaced the train as the primary method of tourism in the years following World War II. Although already scheduled for replacement, the discovery of a major fatigue crack sealed the fate of this structure, leading the way for the present girder bridge to be erected.^[3]