Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Beneath the Evergreens, where murder, mysteries, and mayhem lurk in the shadows of the Pacific Northwest. I'm Jess. And I'm Anna. From haunted forests and unsolved disappearances, to true crime cases buried deep in the moss and the mist.
Speaker: We're digging into the dark secrets hiding under the evergreens. Each episode will explore real cases, eerie encounters, and the legends that keep the Pacific Northwest up at night. So grab your flashlight, lock your doors, and join us...
Speaker: beneath the
Speaker: that. I had a little whisper. I really like that. like A little spooky. A little spooky spooky. Hi, Anna. How are you today?
Speaker: I am doing well. How are you? I'm doing good. Great. Grand. Wonderful. as As those say. Who says that? God. Yes, he does.
Speaker: With a capital G. but
Speaker: Welcome back to Beneath the Evergreens, everyone. i do feel like we need to do a little bit warning. We are recording later than usual. So if this is an extra chaotic episode, that that is why.
Speaker: That is why. That is why. like Oh, man. It's been a fantastic week. Pretty exhausted, though. um and But I hope you like my story. I am stoked. You sent me some like teaser photos, and I've been trying to figure out what what the common theme is.
Speaker: i also loved the... for Well, I guess there was no context. Jessie just sent me some black and white photos, um and I said, oh, I feel like this is her for her episode today, but um really, who knows with her?
Speaker: but I didn't really think about that. In my in my researching, I was like, Anna's going to want to see this. Yeah.
Speaker: I'm over here like trying to piece it together. Like, huh, I don't know what this is of, but like it kind of looks like something I've seen here. So I have an idea in my head of what you're going to talk about.
Speaker: Okay. 50-50 chance that I'm correct. All right. I will see if I can upload these to Instagram. I'm not sure if i will be able to, but if you want to see the pictures I sent Anna, go over to historylink.org and go to the Allen Street Bridge in Kelso.
Speaker: Oh, that's not what I thought it was. Yeah. So what I sent you was a before picture an after picture. and then the new bridge that was um stood up after the fact.
Speaker: Also, just shout out to HistoryLink. That is now one of my favorite websites. Like, they have everything you could ever want to know. About the most random stuff, too. i'm like I'll, like, start on Wikipedia, and then I'll be like i wonder if HistoryLink has something on this. Type it in. Of course they do. So I've got, like, two sources right there, and then I just got to find, like, eight more, and I'm good to go.
Speaker: that i was just browsing history link but our our episode on the the the seattle ellensburg and then spokane fires i was literally just browsing history link and i was like whoa this is crazy i love it have you ever heard of monte crisco the not i know everyone's heard of monte crisco but the town the ghost town in everett oh no my brain did go to sandwich actually at first Mine went to sandwich too. Of course, it's like the deep fried with the cranberry sauce.
Speaker: It's like French toast sandwich. I don't... i've So, I've never had one because i You value your life and your arteries? Well, yes and no. But no, I'm very like, for some reason, I'm very particular about my food. And like okay French toast is a fork and knife food.
Speaker: Okay. But sandwich is a handheld. So okay my brain cannot comp compute that this is a like a sandwich with a fork and knife. It's it's a little bit too weird for me. It looks delicious.
Speaker: My husband loves them, but I can't quite get over that. Well, if you ever go to Disneyland, i don't you don't strike me as a Disneyland connoisseur. he would just When I have kids, I would like to go. i've i've been i went once when I was a kid.
Speaker: Well, they have this restaurant there that's like, I forget what it's actually called, but it's part of like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. o They have a Monte Cristo that you can't pass up.
Speaker: And it is it's not necessarily French toast. It is more of like a deep fried situation. So it's kind of like a donut-esque, which you eat with a hand. So is a sandwich. So that solves your problem.
Speaker: Okay, perfect. So I just need to go to Disneyland then. Yeah, yeah. Just spend like 10 grand on Disneyland. That'd be good. ah Before we actually jump into our story, I do have a question for you. Yeah. I had a friend earlier this week tell me that he he was looking up. He's like, yeah, the average cost of raising a kit is like $300,000. And thought that was very low. I thought it was more than that.
Speaker: And we're talking about ten thousand like thousands of dollars on like Disneyland and stuff. I feel like that cost is only going to go up. So as someone with a child, do that though what's your over-under? Well...
Speaker: I also spoil my child. i also anticipate paying for my kid to go to college. yeah So i'm going to estimate more like 500 to 800,000. That's what my gut was telling me. I feel like, i don't know. feel like things only are getting more and more expensive and like the basic necessities are of going up, you know?
Speaker: i mean, if you cut out like... If you cut out rent and food that you're already buying for yourself, I guess maybe you could... $300,000. If you pay for sports and like a car and... It adds fast. Divers and stuff when they're little. like Even when like they're little, I feel like babies are expensive. Okay, so daycare alone, I was paying $1,600 a month back in 2012 to 2015. That's insane.
Speaker: So that right there, I mean, feel like you're already a quarter of the way there.
Speaker: But yeah, that's that's a bit low. I hope they're not prepping for a kid at $300,000. i i surely hope that he is not.
Speaker: Well, talking about a disaster. um
Speaker: we're going to talk about the allen street bridge disaster have you ever heard of this i have not no okay uh so this is in kelso washington and it happened january 3rd 1923 but it is washington's most deadliest most deadly bridge collapse really yeah it wasn't the gallop and gertie and it wasn't the one that happened up is it skagit where that happened I don't remember that one Galloping Gertie is what I always, when I think of a bridge collapse in Washington, washington I think of Galloping Gertie. There was one in like 2010 up over by, Skagit. Yeah, I-5 Skagit River bridge collapse in 2013.
Speaker: Oh, what what town is it in? um span of bridge carrying more ah over the Skagit River. Where is this at? Oh, located interstate. It's like Mount Vernon area.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. So back to the disaster, Allen street bridge disaster. If you've ever lived in the Pacific Northwest, you know, in the dead of winter, afternoons can be a bit of a crisis.
Speaker: Rain can be coming down horizontally while you're trying to drive home from work. It's a dead of winter at 5 PM. Sun is down. So dark. Sun is so dark. And you're just in the middle of the winter slog and you're like, when will this be over?
Speaker: Well, that is essentially what's happening just so shy of five o'clock on January 1923.
Speaker: It's freezing, it's damp, and daylight is already completely gone. And in Kelso, people are trying to cross the Allen Street Bridge.
Speaker: Below them, the Cowlitz River isn't just running high. It's that like angry river where it's really, really swollen. It's kind of up over its normal banks. It's really muddy and it's violently moving. It's not just streaming down. It's just like a raging river.
Speaker: And again, suspended over this churning wall water is the Allen Street Bridge. It's a creaky 600-foot wooden bridge connecting the working town of Kelso to West Bank.
Speaker: And at this exact time of day, it's an absolute freaking nightmare. Think like 167 if you're on this side of of the mountain at like 5 p.m. You're gridlocked. Everyone's pissed off. You're trying to just get home, but no one's moving, and everyone's just angry. That is essentially what's happening on this bridge right now.
Speaker: My heart rate is spiking. Yes. you're saying that Yes. And then add in that, that rain that's going sideways. It's just, it's a recipe for that disaster. Um, that is the first picture I should sent you.
Speaker: That is what this bridge looks like. okay So on this bridge, you've got Model Ts. You have open air delivery trucks idling bumper to bumper. And if you can imagine that, I don't know if you've ever been by a Model T or like an open air, like old school delivery truck. They smell so bad. So imagine sitting like bumper to bumper with just noxious fumes and you're essentially in a convertible.
Speaker: Just not good. Also on this bridge are heavy dray wagons pulled by draft horses. Also pedestrians. They're walking across the bridge. They've got their wool coats kind of pulled up tight against them. They're on these really, really narrow walkways. And every time a vehicle starts to move, they feel the floor, like the wooden floorboards of the bridge actually shifting and flexing beneath their feet, which is super unsettling.
Speaker: Oh, that sounds like my nightmare. Yes. And here's the thing, though. Everyone in town knew the bridge was on borrowed time. They knew at any moment this this thing was going to fail.
Speaker: Because it was built back in 1906 out of timber and steel cables after an earlier version of the bridge was washed out by a flood. my God. So this is like the ramshackle. Let me just duct tape some stuff together so that we can keep stuff moving. But as we all know, wood doesn't love the Pacific Northwest climate, at least in its cut form.
Speaker: Yeah. It's rotting. It's structurally not great. It's joints start to loosen floor planks start to sag. And some locals had already stopped using the crossing altogether because they were convinced that at some point it's going to break and just dump everything into the river. In fact, Teamsters and drivers have been lodging complaints with the Cowlitz County commissioners for months at this point.
Speaker: So why hadn't anyone fixed it? Because the county was caught in an expensive kind of bureaucratic trap. Right next to this rickety old bridge, there's literally a new construction of a brand new bridge right next to it. It's modern. It's got reinforced concrete. It's got steel. It's got four lanes, which practically at this time, practically no one had.
Speaker: Yeah. It's also like weeks away from opening. Oh my God. So local officials are like, do we throw thousands of taxpayer dollars to fixing this rotting bridge for a couple of weeks? Or should we just wait until this new one's up and then we can just tear it down?
Speaker: Yeah. So they made the gamble. They said, you know what? We're not going to spend the money on this wooden bridge. It's coming down anyways. We're just going to wait until this new one's up. Was there any other way to get across the river? Like, was there like were the crossings like further away or something like that? Like, I'm not exactly sure. I think there might've been crossings further away, but from what I'm about to tell you, it sounds like there's a lot of boats ah crossing at this point.
Speaker: Um, just both how immediate the steamers kind of reacted and stuff. I think it was in the immediate area. It's a lot of just boats back and forth. Okay. Okay. um So their gamble failed. And at 449 on January 3rd, the bridge collapses.
Speaker: whoo To get really why there were over 100 people crammed onto this bridge, you kind of have to understand the sheer frenzy that was happening in Southwest Washington at this point in time.
Speaker: and So long before the white settlers, I feel like I've got to give this a call out just because we need to. um Long before white settlers showed up, the lower Cowwitz Cowlitz was an ancestral highway for the Cowlitz people who use these waterways ah for trade, travel and fishing.
Speaker: Okay. This was kind of their i five essentially. They would travel year round and depending on what time of year they would be in certain sections of this particular river.
Speaker: ah The modern town started taking shape on Christmas Day in 1847 when a Scottish surveyor named Peter Crawford staked land claim rights on the East Bank where cowlets and the cow women river meet.
Speaker: For decades, ah it was a sleepy little outpost, not much going on. It was just kind of one of those... areas where someone in the wilderness could come and find ah goods. But in 1884, Crawford plotted the land into lots and named the town Kelso after his Irish, not Irish, Scottish birthplace. My ancestors would murder me right now.
Speaker: ancestors hear my prayer anyways um by 18 weeks in a row you're just offending your your your ancestors ances left and right nothing about pa nothing about i'm talking i'm telling uh scottish people that they're actually irish it's crazy out here ah people are rolling over in their graves literally old mcpappy
Speaker: hi By 1890, it incorporated and the Northern Pacific Railroad rolled in and the area exploded into a rough and tumble logging hub. So this was kind of, Kelso was built up. It actually became a town. People started taking a vested interest because there's a lot of old growth forests and it just kind of started booming.
Speaker: Okay. Fast forward to 1921. Kelso is still a modest mill town. There's under 2000 people, but the long bell lumber company out of Kansas city buys up 11,000 acres.
Speaker: Wow. Of marshland and timberland right across the river from Kelso. So essentially the, the only way to get to this long bell lumber company is now that bridge, the Allen Allen bridge.
Speaker: But they're not just putting in another small small sawmill or just another lumber company. They're building Longview, which is a massive master planned company. And it's like they're essentially building it as its own little city.
Speaker: Gotcha. I always hear of Longview and Kelso like talked about in tandem. Yes, and this is kind of where i got it got its first start. So the city designed to house the single best lumber manufacturing operation on the planet.
Speaker: And with that announcement, almost overnight, thousands of carpenters, pile drivers, and itinerant laborers flood into the valley and Kelso specifically.
Speaker: So Kelso goes from this really, really small under 2000 population to overnight, like 10,000 people are here. oh my God. And it becomes kind of a bedroom community for this, this massive boom.
Speaker: Every morning, waves and waves of workers trudge from Kelso west west across the Allen Street Bridge and into the mud of the Longview job site. And then every evening, these thousands of people surge back over the bridge.
Speaker: And this is where that bottleneck is happening is because just everybody's going back and forth. And Kelsey was the only place where you can get food and only place where you can get shelter. And gotcha also, just so you know, a lot of these people couldn't find actual housing. So most of them came over with a suitcase and just like put up little teepee style tents or like just were in shanty towns for work.
Speaker: That sounds, i don't know like you work a hard days, like in the cold, and the rain, doing manual labor, and you come back to a teepee. That sounds. That's probably wet as shit. Cause you know, it's not on concrete. Oh God. And if even if it was on concrete, it'd still be cold.
Speaker: Oh yeah. So then Mother Nature steps in. It's winter of 1922 and, or the winter of 1922 and into early 1923. Weather is pretty brutal. Um, this is a textbook Pineapple Express, AKA an atmospheric river in this region.
Speaker: Is that what Pineapple Express? It's not the the movie? Yeah. Pineapple Express is a movie about weed. Yes. yeah And then there's also apparently Pineapple Express, the atmospheric river.
Speaker: Unless I looked up something crazy, which could have happened. I didn't really like I guess this is gonna sound dumb but I promise there's a point to it. Remember last year when we had the atmospheric rivers and like the weather was crazy. That was my first time ever hearing that term and so I kind of thought it was a newer term like it was ah a condition that had happened but the term was new but like didn't quite realize that. It might be retroactively applied.
Speaker: Okay. Because it's it's essentially what they're going through this and during this winter is essentially when we had those atmospheric conditions. Except this was... all winter long like their average rainfall was five to six inches and they got 10 inches in the valley and then over the foothills where it's already snowed they're getting 15 to 20 inches of rain which is like snow on top of or rain on top of snow it's never never good it's like melting every oh geez yes
Speaker: Well, this is honestly, last year was great context for this story. Yes, yes. I cannot imagine. And then imagine just going... So you're working all day in mud and like slick and like tearing down these forests. You have to walk across this crickety-ass bridge, going home, and you're staying in a tent.
Speaker: like you just never get dry. like You just... um Imagine like sickness, disease, like. ah bet it's awful. Yeah. Absolutely awful. it's People of 1921 were built different.
Speaker: Built different. Yeah, my 2026 ass could never. No, never. No, no, no. So like I said, in 1922, the Cowlitz River was completely wild and totally undammed. So now there's, you know, a dam that's up there. We can control the level of the water a little bit better. But back then, it was nothing. So as the all of this rain is melting the snow, the early mountain snowpack is coming down.
Speaker: And unfortunately, and unleashes this ungodly amount of run ah runoff that tears down the valley and just bashes, essentially, into some of these logging camps. And as as the water's coming down, an industrial logging boom snaps under the pressure of this incoming water, sending millions of board feet, so essentially millions of boards, down through the river And the thing that's catching all of these boards is the Allen street bridge that was already barely hanging on by a thread. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: So those runway logs are being slammed straight into the bridge. And that's the middle picture that you're seeing is like right before that's right after all this is happening. So as these huge timber supports are coming down, they're stacking up and underneath the bridge, they're slamming into the middle structure and they're kind of getting tangled in this underwater log jam. And it's acting like a dam and it's putting terrifying amounts of force onto these pilings of the bridge itself. Yeah.
Speaker: One local engineer took one look at the twisted frame and warned that the bridge had been racked so hard that at this point, a toothpick will topple it. So that's how much force is on it and how it's like like twisting, right? yeah So this is happening within a matter of 10 minutes. And remember, this is 167 in the middle of rush hour. Like people are just cramped. There's also pedestrians on this bridge too. And so there no one's able to move because you're gridlocked.
Speaker: yeah And so between the raging river below and the foot dragging of the courthouse and and just no one's taking this bridge seriously, tragedy strikes.
Speaker: And at 4.49 p.m. on Wednesday, January 3rd, all of a sudden there's this loud snap and the bridge goes down.
Speaker: my God. And just before this, maybe 15 minutes before this, was the final whistle blow at the Long Bell job site across the river. So literally everyone is heading home. There's around 20 automobiles, several freight wagons, and between 100 and 150 pedestrians packed onto this wooden bridge at this exact moment.
Speaker: ah Then as everybody's coming through, in the middle of the bridge, ah everything kind of goes to a halt because a car stalls in the middle lane. Another vehicle that was trying to approach is a little too far into the other lane. And because of the stalled car, he can't correct. So now we're just like, there's also this head on collision that essentially happened in the middle of the bridge, which is making things even worse.
Speaker: So as all of this log jam is coming down in the center of this Allen street bridge is essentially 300 foot span where the majority of the weight of the cars is. So directly in the middle,
Speaker: And now you're getting this force from the all of the log jam underneath too. And it's just, no it's not good. So like I said, 449, there's this deafening sound. It's so loud that people can hear it across the bridge and like deep into Kelso. People come running because they're like, what the hell just happened?
Speaker: And what happened is on the East Bank, the main steel support cable. So this is... There's one of two. One of the two support cables rips out of its concrete anchorage and just violently whips around.
Speaker: As soon as that goes, the deck violently whips and tilts to one side. And without the the cables tension, the wooden towers just start to buckle and splinter down. So it's like caving inwards on itself.
Speaker: And if you were standing on the roadway, there was no warning. Literally, you were walking one second and the next second, all of the wood beneath your feet is just gone and you're in the river. Oh my God. Just, yeah. Violently whipped, tilted to one side. You just drop and...
Speaker: This is a 60 foot drop and the entire 300 foot cent center section broke in two parts and plummeted into the freezing river. And again, this is dead winter. Yeah. Really harsh conditions. It's cold.
Speaker: So cars, delivery trucks, freight wagons, freight wagons. Draft horses and dozens of people crash into the current together. And it's just instant chaos.
Speaker: Open top roadsters are like flipped upside down. Horses are panicking. And that's the saddest part because they're still tied to this wagon, right? Oh no. I mean, i probably should have done a, whatchamacallit, warning at the top of this, but they don't make it. um Then as people are falling in and trying to get away,
Speaker: the bridge is still crumbling. So there's still giant structural timbers like crashing down into this river at this point. And again, we're in the middle of a storm where the river is super angry. So it's rushing really fast. So like people essentially hit in the water and instantly they're 20 feet already down. So they're just essentially on ah on a straight path to the Columbia river.
Speaker: Yeah. The people near the shoreline got lucky. They managed to strip strip, Hello? Stripping. Stripping. Hey. They managed to sprint backwards onto solid ground just as the planks are peeling away.
Speaker: ah But over on the deeper water, you know, people are... not, not doing great. A few workers actually managed to jump straight up as the roadway roadway gave way. So essentially they, they, they end up in the water and they're able to push themselves up based on the log jam that was underneath. They're able to break the, into the water again and able to grab the remaining truss cable Oh, because the bridge is walking back and forth. They're able to grab it and with their bare hands and they're like holding on for dear life. Yeah. And a couple of small boats were able to maneuver beneath them and catch them so that they could be saved. But this was like maybe five people.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Others had to fight their way out of the water. So r h Oswalt, for example, he was dragged down by falling wreckage and pinned under heavy timbers.
Speaker: He was just about under like out of breath when he remembers the current randomly shifting and all of the lumber just kind of cascading off of him because the water pressure was so high. And he was able to like pop up and...
Speaker: Somehow at that exact moment, a skiff was going by and just happened to see him and like pull him aboard. So people are getting in the water, small river boats, steamers like the Panoma and the Cowlitz are trying to immediately get to the area and try to catch people on the other end, but they're also getting hit by this debris. So they're like, do we, do we rescue people? Do we save our boat? Like what's going on? Yeah.
Speaker: But It's not looking so good. Dozens are saved, but by five o'clock night, night's fallen hard. It's really dark. And you know, this is 1923. There's no search lights.
Speaker: There's no dive teams. There's no 911 dispatch. And it's hard to search in the, in the pitch black, especially if you only have handheld kerosene lanterns yeah at this point. So essentially the only way they're able to find someone is if they're desperately shouting for help.
Speaker: ah And even then they're not really sure where to go. yeah um Two men were pulled out alive, long bell worker named Harold Kirk and a Vancouver plumber named George McDaniel. But unfortunately, like many others that were saved, they died within hours of being pulled out of the river because of the amount of logs that were crashing up against people. They were just like essentially crushed. And then they also had hypothermia. Yeah. Yeah. But the sadder thing is dozens of people just vanished, never to be seen again.
Speaker: Oh, my God. By the next morning, the rescue efforts had turned into a grim salvage mission. Mission. Mission. So so to to help them in the search, they strung heavy cables with nets across the end of the cowlitz where it meets the Columbia River. And they're essentially trying to, like, grab things in the debris and then, like, sort through it as it comes through.
Speaker: Um, they didn't, unfortunately they didn't find a whole lot. It was kind of like, once you got in there, you weren't coming back out. And then they even were a get able to get people into the river and try to use grappling hooks and stuff to move around the debris. But it was like the river was moving so fast. There was already like two feet of silt over where all this is happening. So it's just, it's not great. Yeah.
Speaker: The floodwaters were carrying massive massive loads of sand and sediments downstream, burying Model Ts upside down within hours. When divers went down into the freezing current, they found the bottom of the cowlitz had completely paved over the wreckage. It looked like nothing happened at all.
Speaker: And months went by without a single recovery. It wasn't until July, more than six months later, that the river finally gave up some victims. Arlen Miller washed up on shore on a rock jetty two miles south of Kelso.
Speaker: um But the man that was in the car with him was never found. Through the rest of 1923 and into 1924, people kept randomly appearing on the banks, which is also a creepy, creepy thing to find.
Speaker: And then um now the Allen Street Bridge c collapsep remains the single Collapse remains the single deadliest bridge disaster in Washington state history.
Speaker: But more than a century later, nobody knows exactly how many people died. Oh, wow. The official state record usually lists somewhere between 17 to 20 victims, but the local coroner at the time estimated it was actually more like 35, 40 people that vanished into the river.
Speaker: oh my God. And why is this massive gap? It's because remember when I said there's this huge transient nature right now at Kelso, yeah um the Long Bell Project had drawn hundreds of people, particularly single men from all over the country. And they were living in tents, cheap hotels, rooming houses, and many were only in town for a couple of days. No one actually knew who they were.
Speaker: Their family didn't necessarily know where they were. And so days after the collapse, what was actually happening is all of these landladies and landlords were walking into rooms where they think people should be and seeing if, you know, they're there.
Speaker: And if there's just unclaimed luggage or whatever, they're just assuming those people went down with the the bridge. that's That's horrible.
Speaker: Yes. So when a disaster takes a dozen of dozens of lives in a matter of seconds and leaves half of them buried beneath the water, a town doesn't necessarily just move on. Over the decades, the tragedy has settled deep into the local lore.
Speaker: Fishermen on the cowlits started calling the stretch the the graveyard channel, which is very morbid. yeah And this is specifically because they will be fishing and they will feel like they've caught something in their nets and they'll like go to pull it up. And all of a sudden they'll just get this like really cold feeling, just like really creepy, weird vibes and nothing will be in the net.
Speaker: Over in West Kelso, the old rooming houses, A lot of the people said right after this event happened at 530, when normally these people would be coming home, they would hear people like walking up the stairs and doors closing, like someone actually got home from work, but no one ever arrived. And what's crazy about this is actually in Japan, when Fukushima happened, there's a lot of stories about like after the tsunami happened and people were like swept away, like taxi drivers and, and random people will get these knocks on the door from people that look like completely waterlogged, like asking for help or asking for a way home.
Speaker: And then you would like go to help them and they would just like disappear in your backseat of your taxi or just like disappear out of your home. And so it's like an interesting phenomenon to hear that here in Kelso as well.
Speaker: Yeah. A lot of people say that the older buildings, the historic buildings in downtown Kelso, like the theater pub, have accumulated shadowy figures and whispers. um Some people say that if you walk near where the old bridge was on January afternoons around 445, you will start to like hear the rush of of traffic that you wouldn't necessarily hear before. And then all of a sudden, like a loud crack and the groaning of wood beneath your feet almost as if the the bridge is back and like you're reliving that specific event.
Speaker: So on March 19th, 1923, just 75 days after the collapse is when the replacement Allen street bridge was reopened or was opened to traffic. And that is the last picture I sent you.
Speaker: um It's built of reinforced concrete and steel. The new bridge was four lanes wide with a modern vertical lift. um I showed you the old photos, but um if you look at it versus the old wooden bridge, you can tell it's like this brand new, yeah modern looking sleek design.
Speaker: um Four months later, Longview was officially dedicated, growing into one of the... Logging capitals of the world. Across the state, the disaster forced lawmakers to establish strict mandatory bridge inspection standards, ending the era where counties could gamble on rotten wooden spans while waiting on new constructions. So something something did, silver lining, something good did come out of this.
Speaker: Yeah. But the Allen street disaster wasn't just a freak accident of nature. it was, it was the price of a boomtown outrunning its own bones, a deadly collision, a brutal, brutal weather, bureaucratic delay and industrial rush kind of led to this unfortunate event.
Speaker: ah Today, drivers crossing the Kalitz river on a modern freeway, you know, you don't even think about it, but yeah, 80 feet below you is where, you know, tens of tens of people have have died. So just something to think about on your commute home.
Speaker: Lovely. But that's the story I have for you today. That was so fascinating. I didn't know anything about that. Me either. either. i was actually kind of surprised. I didn't realize that there was ah another deadly disaster or a bridge other than Galloping Gertie.
Speaker: Yeah. That's crazy. Also just like interesting given the, like, don't weather similarities. Like I feel like I could totally imagine something out like that happening today. Like obviously to a lesser degree, but make sitting in traffic feel a little bit more ominous.
Speaker: 1000% if you didn't feel uncomfortable enough. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That was such a great episode. You're welcome. Well, that's it for today's dive into the dark corners of the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker: If you love the stories or shivered a little, be sure to subscribe and follow so you don't miss what's lurking beneath the evergreens next time. Thanks for joining us on Beneath the Evergreens. We appreciate you diving into the mysteries with us.
Speaker: Until next time, keep your eyes open and your door is locked.
