Transportation in Ellwood City

      The Railroad has played a very important role in the development of Ellwood City. The first lumber was brought in via the Pittsburgh & Western Railroad to the Frisco Station, where it was hauled into Ellwood City by Elmer E. Hazen and his team of horses.
Multiple railroad companies have scheduled Ellwood City as a stop at the Union station including the B&O (Baltimore & Ohio) previously known locally as Pittsburgh & Western and the P&L.E (Pittsburgh & Lake Erie) railroad. Ellwood City was also on the P.H.N.C. & Butler (Pittsburgh, Harmony, and New Castle) interurban railway and housed the Harmony line trolley station on the corner of Fifth Street and Spring Avenue.
       By 1910 horse and buggies shared the paved streets of Ellwood City with more and more automobiles but the city was still divided by the main railroad line. There was already a bridge over the railroad tracks on Second Street but it was not until 1912 that B&O built the Fifth Street underpass “subway” railroad span across Fifth Street.
The Connoquenessing Creek also runs through the middle of Ellwood City so a number of bridges have been necessary over the years. Originally Hazel Dell (North side) and Ellwood City were connected by a covered bridge. This bridge was replaced with the Hazel Dell steel bridge in 1896 that spanned bank to bank and connected Sixth Street with College Street. In 1915 Ellwood City replaced this bridge with the Veterans Memorial Bridge (also known as the Fifth Street Bridge) that connected Fifth Street with Todd Avenue. Eighty years later, this bridge was replaced with a new bridge linking Fifth Street with North Street. The original Ewing Park Bridge was built 1918 by the Shelby Tube Co. and was a toll bridge until the city took it over in 1939. Ellwood City replaced this bridge in 2004 with a new bridge in the same location.

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