The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a pair of

twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of Twin Last Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two ...

suspension bridge A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck (bridge), deck is hung below suspension wire rope, cables on vertical suspenders. The first modern examples of this type of bridge were built in the early 1800s. Simple suspension bridg ...

s that span the

Tacoma Narrows The Tacoma Narrows (or the Narrows), a strait, is part of Puget Sound in the U.S. state of Washington. A navigable maritime waterway between glacial landforms, the Narrows separates the Kitsap Peninsula from the city of Tacoma. The Narrow ...

strait of

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ; ) is a complex estuary, estuarine system of interconnected Marine habitat, marine waterways and basins located on the northwest coast of the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. As a part of the Salish Sea, the sound ...

in Pierce County,

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

. The bridges connect the city of

Tacoma Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, southwest of Bellevue, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, northwest of Mount ...

with the

Kitsap Peninsula The Kitsap Peninsula () lies west of Seattle across Puget Sound, in Washington state in the Pacific Northwest. Hood Canal separates the peninsula from the Olympic Peninsula on its west side. The peninsula, a.k.a. "Kitsap", encompasses all of Kits ...

and carry State Route 16 (known as Primary State Highway 14 until 1964) over the strait. Historically, the name "Tacoma Narrows Bridge" has applied to the original bridge, nicknamed "Galloping Gertie", which opened in July 1940 but collapsed possibly because of

aeroelastic flutter Aeroelasticity is the branch of physics and engineering studying the interactions between the inertial, elastic, and aerodynamic forces occurring while an elastic body is exposed to a fluid flow. The study of aeroelasticity may be broadly classi ...

four months later, as well as to the successor of that bridge, which opened in 1950 and still stands today as the westbound lanes of the present-day two-bridge complex. The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened on July 1, 1940. The original bridge received its nickname "Galloping Gertie" for the vertical movement of the deck observed by construction workers during windy conditions. While engineers and engineering professor F. B. Farquharson were hired to seek ways to stop the odd movements, months' experiments were unsuccessful. The bridge became known for its pitching deck, and collapsed into Puget Sound the morning of November 7, 1940, under high wind conditions. Engineering issues, as well as the United States' involvement in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, postponed plans to replace the bridge for several years; the new bridge was opened on October 14, 1950. By 1990, population growth and development on the Kitsap Peninsula had caused traffic on the bridge to exceed its design capacity; as a result, in 1998 Washington voters approved a measure to support building a parallel bridge. After a series of protests and court battles, construction began in 2002 and the new bridge opened to carry eastbound traffic on July 16, 2007, while the 1950 bridge was reconfigured to carry westbound traffic. At the time of their construction, both the 1940 and 1950 bridges were the third-longest suspension bridges in the world in terms of main span length, behind the

Golden Gate Bridge The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in California, United States. The structure links San Francisco—the northern tip of the San Francisco Peni ...

and

George Washington Bridge The George Washington Bridge is a double-decked suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River, connecting Fort Lee in Bergen County, New Jersey, with the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is named after George W ...

. The 1950 and 2007 bridges are as of 2017 the fifth-longest suspension bridge spans in the United States and the 43rd-longest in the world. Tolls were charged on the bridge for the entire four-month service life of the original span, as well as the first 15 years of the 1950 bridge. In 1965, the bridge's construction bonds plus interest were paid off, and the state ceased toll collection on the bridge. Over 40 years later, tolls were reinstated as part of the financing of the twin span, and are at present collected only from vehicles traveling eastbound.

Original bridge (1940)

The desire for the construction of a bridge in this location dates back to 1889 with a

Northern Pacific Railway The Northern Pacific Railway was an important American transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the Western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest between 1864 and 1970. It was approved and chartered b ...

proposal for a trestle bridge; however, it was only in the late 1920s that interest in this project was revived. In 1937, the Washington State legislature created the Washington State Toll Bridge Authority and appropriated $5,000 to study the request by Tacoma and Pierce County for a bridge over the Narrows. The bridge was designed by

Leon Moisseiff Leon Solomon Moisseiff (November 10, 1872 – September 3, 1943) was a leading suspension bridge engineer in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. He was awarded The Franklin Institute's Louis E. Levy Medal in 1933. His developments of the ...

and cost $6.4 million. The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened to traffic on July 1, 1940. Its main span collapsed into the Tacoma Narrows four months later on November 7, 1940, at 11:00 a.m. (Pacific time) possibly as a result of

caused by a wind. The bridge collapse had lasting effects on science and engineering. In many undergraduate physics texts, the event is presented as an example of elementary forced

resonance Resonance is a phenomenon that occurs when an object or system is subjected to an external force or vibration whose frequency matches a resonant frequency (or resonance frequency) of the system, defined as a frequency that generates a maximu ...

, with the wind providing an external periodic frequency that matched the natural structural frequency; the cause is still debated by engineers today. A contributing factor was its solid sides which did not allow wind to pass through the bridge's deck. Thus, its design allowed the bridge to catch the wind and sway, which ultimately took it down. It was the first suspension bridge to utilize these solid I-beams as a form of support for the road deck, as other bridges would incorporate trusses in their designs in order to catch the wind. Its failure also boosted research in the field of bridge aerodynamics and aeroelastic fields which have influenced the designs of all the world's great long-span bridges built since 1940. There were no human deaths in the collapse of the bridge. The only fatality was a

Cocker Spaniel Cocker Spaniels are dogs belonging to two breeds of the spaniel dog type: the American Cocker Spaniel and the English Cocker Spaniel, both of which are commonly called simply Cocker Spaniel in their countries of origin. In the early 20th century, ...

named Tubby, who perished after he was abandoned in a car on the bridge by his owner, Leonard Coatsworth. Professor Frederick Burt Farquharson, an engineer from the University of Washington who had been involved in the design of the bridge, tried to rescue Tubby but was bitten by the terrified dog when he attempted to remove him. The collapse of the bridge was recorded on

Kodachrome Kodachrome is the brand name for a color reversal film introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935. It was one of the first successful color materials and was used for both cinematography and still photography. For many years, Kodachrome was widely used ...

16 mm film 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical Film gauge, gauge of Photographic film, film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 mm film, 8 mm and 35mm movie film, 35 mm. It ...

by Barney Elliott and Harbine Monroe, owners of The Camera Shop in

, and shows Farquharson leaving the bridge after trying to rescue Tubby and making observations in the middle of the bridge. The film was subsequently sold to

Paramount Studios Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production and distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount Global. It is the sixth-oldest film studio i ...

, who then duplicated the footage for newsreels in black-and-white and distributed the film worldwide to movie theaters.

Castle Films Castle Films was a film company founded in California by former newsreel cameraman Eugene W. Castle (1897–1960) in 1924. Originally, Castle Films produced industrial and advertising films. Then in 1937, the company pioneered the production and ...

also received distribution rights for 8 mm home video. Elliott and Monroe's original films of the construction and collapse of the bridge were shot on 16 mm

color film, but most copies in circulation are in black and white because

newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news, news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a Movie theater, cinema, newsreels were a source of cu ...

s of the day copied the film onto 35 mm black-and-white

stock Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the Share (finance), shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporatio ...

. There were also film speed discrepancies between Monroe and Elliot's footage, with Monroe filming his footage in 24 fps while Elliott had filmed his footage at 16 fps. As a result, most copies in circulation also show the bridge oscillating approximately 50% faster than real time, due to an assumption during conversion that the film was shot at 24 frames per second rather than the actual 16 fps. In 1998, ''The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse'' was selected for preservation in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation (library and archival science), preservation, each selected for its cultural, historical, and aestheti ...

by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". This footage is commonly shown to

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

, and

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

students as a means to teach about engineering disaster. The dismantling of the towers and side spans — having survived the collapse of the main span, but being damaged beyond repair — began shortly after the collapse and continued into May 1943. The United States' participation in

, as well as engineering and finance issues, delayed plans to replace the bridge.

Westbound bridge (1950)

After the infamous fall of the original bridge, Professor Farquharson was commissioned again to test new designs for the bridge at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

, the home of these models. Tests ensured the new design would have a different outcome in high wind conditions than the first and construction began on April 12, 1948, following the completion of a financing and insurance plan. A major earthquake struck the construction site on April 13, 1949, but the only damage was to a cable that fell into the water and was recovered; a fire two months later on the west tower damaged equipment and tools but did not cause permanent damage. The towers were complete in July 1949 and the cables for the new bridge were finished on January 16, 1950. The current westbound bridge was designed and rebuilt with open

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as Beam (structure), beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so ...

es, stiffening

strut A strut is a structural component commonly found in engineering, aeronautics, architecture and anatomy. Struts generally work by resisting longitudinal compression, but they may also serve in tension. A stay is sometimes used as a synonym for ...

s and openings in the roadway to let wind through. It opened on October 14, 1950, and is 5,979 feet (1822 m) long—40 feet (12 m) longer than the first bridge. The new bridge cost $18 million to construct. Local residents nicknamed the new bridge Sturdy Gertie, as the oscillations that plagued the previous design had been eliminated. This bridge and its new parallel eastbound bridge are currently the fifth-longest suspension bridges in the United States. When built, the westbound bridge was the third longest suspension bridge span in the world. Like other modern suspension bridges, the westbound bridge was built with steel plates that feature sharp entry edges rather than the flat plate sides used in the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge (see the

article for an example). The bridge was designed to handle 60,000 vehicles a day. It carried both westbound and eastbound traffic until the eastbound bridge opened on July 15, 2007. During the

Hanukkah Eve windstorm of 2006 The Hanukkah Eve windstorm of 2006 was a powerful Pacific Northwest windstorm in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and southern British Columbia, Canada between December 14, 2006, and December 15, 2006. The storm produced hurric ...

, the bridge was closed for the first time in its operating existence due to heavy winds but reopened approximately 6 hours later.

Eastbound bridge (2007)

In 1998, voters in several Washington counties approved an advisory measure to create a second Narrows span. Construction of the new span, which carries eastbound traffic parallel to the current bridge, began on October 4, 2002, and was completed in July 2007. The

Washington State Department of Transportation The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT or WashDOT, both ) is a governmental agency that constructs, maintains, and regulates the use of transportation infrastructure in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. Establi ...

(WSDOT) signed a design-and-construction agreement with

Bechtel Bechtel Corporation () is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California in 1898, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia in the Washington metropolitan area. , the '' E ...

and Kiewit Pacific Co., who then engaged in a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

to construct eastbound. It was estimated by WSDOT that the project would cost $849 million to complete, but ultimately finished under budget at $786 million due to not using the funds allocated to emergency scenarios. On July 15, 2007, the eastbound section opened to a ceremonial

5K run The 5K run is a long-distance road running competition over a distance of . Also referred to as the 5K road race, 5 km, or simply 5K, it is the shortest of the most common road running distances. It is usually distinguished from the 5000 me ...

across the newly constructed bridge. About 10,000 people participated in the event. After the run finished, a ceremonial ribbon cutting event took place on eastbound. WSDOT estimated 40,000 people would be in attendance for the opening, but 60,000 ultimately attended. A select few Washington State government officials partook in the ribbon cutting, such as Washington State Treasurer Michael Murphy, State Representative Pat Lantz, Chief of the Washington State Patrol John Batiste, and State Speaker of the House

Frank Chopp Frank Vana Chopp (May 13, 1953 – March 22, 2025) was an American politician who was the 46th Speaker of the Washington House of Representatives from 1999 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, Chopp represented Washington's 43rd legislat ...

. The bridge was dedicated in honor of State Representative Ruth Fisher and State Senator Robert "Bob" Oke, a South Kitsap resident, one of the main proponents of building the second span across Puget Sound between the Kitsap Peninsula and Tacoma. The eastbound bridge has an overall length of , and a main span of , making it the fifth largest

in the United States. In comparison, the

Golden Gate bridge The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in California, United States. The structure links San Francisco—the northern tip of the San Francisco Peni ...

in San Francisco has a total length of m or 1.7 miles. WSDOT collects a toll before entering the eastbound span. Tolls currently are $4.50 for " Good to Go" account holders with in-vehicle

transponder In telecommunications, a transponder is a device that, upon receiving a signal, emits a different signal in response. The term is a blend of ''transmitter'' and ''responder''. In air navigation or radio frequency identification, a flight trans ...

s, $5.50 for cash/ credit card customers, and $6.50 for those who choose Pay-By-Mail. The existing span had been free of tolls since 1965. The new bridge was the first facility to use the new Good To Go

electronic toll collection Electronic toll collection (ETC) is a wireless system to automatically collect the usage fee or Road pricing, toll charged to vehicles using toll roads, HOV lanes, toll bridges, and toll tunnels. It is a faster alternative which is replacing Tol ...

system. Tolls on the bridge are expected to pay off the loans and deferred sales tax by 2033.

Gallery

File:Narrows Bridge Sections BA.JPG, New bridge sections used in construction of the new span. File:Tacoma Narrows.jpg, A

panorama A panorama (formed from Greek language, Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any Obtuse angle, wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography (panoramic photography), film, seismic image ...

of Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 2007. This picture was taken at Titlow Hidden Beach. File:Tacoma Narrows 3 0.jpg, The towers during construction of the new eastbound span, May 2005 File:Tacoma Narrows and Mt. Rainier.jpg, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, during the construction of the eastbound span, as seen from the

in December 2005, with

and

Mount Rainier Mount Rainier ( ), also known as Tahoma, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. The mountain is located in Mount Rainier National Park about south-southeast of Seattle. With an off ...

visible in the background. File:TopViewNarrows.jpg, Both bridges during the 2007 bridge's grand opening ceremony, as seen from the top of the westbound bridge. File:Tacoma Narrows Bridge 2009.jpg, The twin-span bridges seen from the Tacoma side in 2009. File:Tacoma Narrows Bridge aerial.jpg, Aerial view, 2016 File:Tacoma Narrows aerial.jpg, Aerial view, 2017 File:Narrows Bridge 2247.jpg, The twin-span complex seen from the boat dock near the Tacoma/ University Place city border; 2023

References

;Notes

External links

* {{Authority control, state=collapsed Suspension bridges in Washington (state) Bridges in Tacoma, Washington Bridges completed in 1950 Bridges completed in 2007 North Tacoma, Washington Rebuilt buildings and structures in the United States Toll bridges in Washington (state) Road bridges in Washington (state) Steel bridges in the United States