I would like to thank Longview, Washington for solving a squirrel traffic problem with more imagination than most cities apply to human traffic.
In 1963, squirrels were crossing a busy street and getting hit by cars.
The city’s answer was not a sign.
Not a campaign.
Not a very stern Facebook post asking squirrels to be more careful.
They built them a bridge.
A suspension bridge.
For squirrels.
It is called Nutty Narrows, and I have never respected a piece of municipal infrastructure faster.
THE FUNNIEST PART IS THAT IT SOLVED A REAL PROBLEM
That is what makes this story work for me.
The bridge is absurd until you picture the problem from the squirrel’s point of view.
Tree over here.
Tree over there.
Road full of two-ton metal objects in the middle.
Why would the squirrel understand our transportation system?
Give it a path.
Wildlife crossings are serious infrastructure. Longview simply got there at squirrel scale decades before giant animal overpasses became familiar in highway design.
Photo: SounderBruce / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
THEN THEY BUILT MORE
The original bridge could have remained one weird little local legend.
Longview committed to the bit.
Visitor information now documents multiple squirrel bridges around town, with different designs and personalities.
The result is a city where “squirrel bridge tour” is a sentence you can say without being removed from the group chat.
I deeply respect this.
NUTTY NARROWS IS AN EXCELLENT NAME
The name riffs on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
Which gives a tiny squirrel crossing the linguistic weight of regional megainfrastructure.
There is something very Pacific Northwest about taking the joke seriously enough to name it properly.
AND THEN, BECAUSE OF COURSE, CAME SQUIRRELFEST
Eventually the bridges grew into a community tradition big enough to support an annual festival.
SquirrelFest turns the city’s weird little infrastructure history into a reason to gather, explore and lean all the way into the thing other towns might have tried to explain away.
That is what I like most.
Nobody is apologizing for the squirrel bridges.
They made merch energy out of them.
THE EVENT PASSES. THE BRIDGES STAY.
This is important because I do not want the website turning into a graveyard of expired “THIS WEEKEND!” captions.
SquirrelFest is seasonal.
The bridges are the evergreen story.
You can stop in Longview year-round, look for Nutty Narrows and the other crossings, get lunch and finally turn one of those “we always drive past here” places into a place you have actually been.
WHY THIS IS A GREAT DETOUR
Not every road-trip stop needs to rearrange your soul.
Some stops are allowed to be thirty minutes of delight.
You pull off I-5.
You find a bridge built for an animal who weighs less than your water bottle.
You learn the city has been doing this for more than sixty years.
You leave with a story.
That is enough.
AND YET THERE IS SOMETHING BIGGER UNDER IT
Roads teach us to think human movement is the only movement that counts.
Animals do not understand that assumption.
They still cross where food, shelter and instinct tell them to cross.
Nutty Narrows is cute because it is tiny.
It is interesting because the problem is enormous.
We built the road.
The squirrel still needed the tree on the other side.
Longview gave it a way over.
Then, because Washington can be wonderful, they threw a festival.
Core bridge history last verified October 2026. SquirrelFest dates change annually; check current Longview visitor and event information before planning around the festival.
Sources: official Longview/SquirrelFest information; National Register history; Wikimedia Commons licensing record.
