We declare this to be Bridge week in Washington State– June 28 –July 4th
Last week Ben Helle over at the Washington State Archives pointed out to us that the week of June 28th- July 4th is a week of anniversaries for several bridges in Washington State. It is the 75th anniversary of the opening of two massive public works – the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and the Lake Washington Floating Bridge. A quick visit over to Historylink revealed several others. The Seattle’s University Bridge replaced the Latona Bridge on July 1, 1919; the Montlake Bridge opened on June 27, 1925; the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (also known as Galloping Gertie) opened for traffic on July 1, 1940, and Lake Washington Floating Bridge was dedicated on July 2, 1940. And that’s just to name a few. Ben threw down the gauntlet and said let’s search through our collections to see what we have on bridges. First stop of course was to Sean Lanksbury, Head of Special Collections. He suggested several items but the ones we dug through (can you say treasure hunt?) were Lucy Hamilton’s collection of Washington State bridges and railways construction photographs, and Val Rinehart’s photograph collection of road and bridge construction projects in Washington. 
If you love engineering your heart would have started beating a little faster when you opened these boxes. Photo albums galore, including pictures of bridges under construction from all over the state. But that of course is just the historic items we have in our collection. The State Library also collects ALL documents published by Washington State Agencies. Want to know what’s happening with the 520 Bridge replacement? A search of our catalog will give you both historic and current information many of them in digital format so instantly at your fingertips.
We are keeping our eyes open for the State Archives contributions which we plan to share. So if you have a secret. or not so secret. love of bridges watch our Facebook and Twitter pages this week. And remember for all things Washington, the State Library and Archives are a good “one stop shop” errr, make that two.
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