A long-awaited link along the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor will be completed next year with the construction of a pedestrian bridge in Jim Thorpe.

The 250-foot steel truss bridge, spanning the Lehigh River, will help fill one of the last remaining gaps along the trail in Carbon County, and help improve the trail system that spans from Wilkes-Barre to Easton.The Carbon County Commissioners on Thursday officially awarded the contract for the construction of the bridge to Latona Trucking of Pittston, Luzerne County.The cost of the contract is $2,729,483.20. In all, the project is estimated to cost $3.2 million.Elissa Garofalo, executive director of the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, thanked the commissioners for making such an extensive project a reality.“You all had a role in bringing this bridge here, which is actually the biggest project on the D&L trail to date coming in at roughly 3.2 million,” Garofalo said.The idea of a pedestrian bridge in Jim Thorpe has been considered for years. In 2014, the county received a $2 million grant from PennDOT’s Transportation Alternatives Program that turned that idea into a serious proposal. Other funding was received from federal funds.“We realize how involved it was. It was very complex. Myself and my staff appreciate all that the commissioners and the county did,” Garofalo said.Construction is expected to begin in the spring. Garofalo said that they are unable to begin construction during the winter because of a moratorium on work in the Lehigh River to protect native fish.Once work begins, she said, it will be a short turnaround before the bridge will be opened to the public.“We’ve taken great pains to schedule the construction to create the least disruption for the community,” she said.With the recent completion of a pedestrian connector in Lehighton, the bridge will nearly complete the trail in Carbon County. Garofalo said that the only remaining gap in the trail will be just below the new bridge, in the borough of Jim Thorpe.Both Carbon and Lehigh counties are close to completing their sections of the trail. The D&L National Heritage Corridor staff also decided that since the trail is so close to completion, they are releasing maps of the “Anthracite” section of the trail.“Lehigh County is now vying to complete their trail before Carbon County. It was always said that Carbon would be the first to finish,” she said.