Silver Bridge: Gallipolis

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The town's website says the name of the town is pronounced Ga-lap-o-LEES. It's, technically, not the city that was directly across from Point Pleasant, West Virginia by the Silver Bridge. The historical marker says it was Kanauga, Ohio. All of the news articles used Gallipolis as the point, however. No one is going to argue, because no one wants to be part of this tragedy. Sadly, it affected them all. In fact, if you look at the list of people memorialized on the historical marker (upper left), you'll see that four states lost residents. On the Gallipolis side there aren't site markers the way there are on the Point Pleasant side. The historical marker is located about a mile from the Silver Memorial Bridge, in a rest area. However, the Ohio side has two very significant things on display: the complete list of victims; and a replica of the culprit that caused the disaster. The bottom photo is an eyebar, a replica of the mechanisms that connected the bridge and held it together. It's also what catastrophically failed on December 15, 1967, sending 46 people to their deaths in the Ohio River. Five people who fell from the bridge were rescued, thanks to boats that were near the area when the bridge fell. Because of their quick work, five people were pulled out of the cold Ohio River alive. As I mentioned in the other discussion, the legend of the Mothman was blamed for the disaster. The NTSB said that eyebar failure, which would not have been detected by inspection methods available (the report said they would have had to take the eyebar apart to see the corrosion that caused the crack and the subsequent chain of events), was the sole culprit. Some good did come from the tragedy. President Johnson signed a highway bill in August 1968 that mandated the continual routine inspection of ALL bridges. While we've had other bridge collapses since then (the I-35 disaster in Minneapolis being the most notable), most of the bridge problems have resulted from accidents (such as a boat hitting the Sunshine Skyway, causing its collapse, or the recent Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, also caused by a boat running into the bridge). The two towns are forever linked by the tragedy, and they have memorialized the deceased admirably. PHOTOS: (Top left) Ohio historical marker listing the 46 individuals from four states who lost their lives in 1967 (Top right) The other side of the mark, explaining the bridge (Bottom) A replica of an eyebar like the one that failed and caused the bridge's collapse.