Collapse of the Tacoma Narrow Bridge

Slender, elegant and graceful, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge stretched like a steel ribbon across Puget Sound in 1940. It opened on July 1st. Only four months later, the great span’s short life ended in disaster. “Galloping Gertie,” collapsed in a windstorm on November 7,1940.

The bridge became famous as “the most dramatic failure in bridge engineering history.”