Until 2003 it was a railroad trestle.
Built in 1882, the 300-foot-tall — at the deepest point in the canyon — structure originally stood on cast iron legs and spanned a 1/3-mile wide canyon in the Appalachian Plateau.
In 1900 the cast iron was replaced with steel, strong enough to ferry loads of crude and timber to metropolitan centers in Pennsylvania and western New York… but those repairs did not include replacing the original anchor pins at the base.
The trestle stood tall and sturdy while Knox and Kane Railroad did its job until it was closed in 1959.
In 1987, the K and K began offering excursion rides — steam engines, as you would expect — and did so until 2002.
In 2003, workmen were performing maintenance when a ferocious storm approached. The F1 tornado (not much of a storm by Wichita Falls standards) took out 11 of the supports.
The state, making lemonade from lemons, built a skywalk 700 feet out over the gorge… the highest in the east.
You may walk out to stand on the wooden deck or on the inch-thick glass panels to survey the rusted wreckage of the trestle from a height of 225 feet.
Acrophobia won out. I chose to stand on the wooden deck.
