On a rainy February morning Kent Taylor, 73, drove up through a moss-covered forest to a heavy metal gate guarding a private logging road. As he got out to open it, reggae beats streamed out of the car speakers.
Unlocking the gate has become routine for the people, like Taylor, living south of the Fairfax Bridge in unincorporated Pierce County since the historic structure closed about a year ago. Now, this rugged backroad is the only way to get from their homes to the outside world.
“This thing is a little bit stiff and a little hard to do. Some of the more ancient folks have problems with it — including myself,” Taylor said, struggling with the gate.
The 104-year-old Fairfax Bridge closed permanently last April, shuttering the only public road crossing the Carbon River Canyon. The Washington State Department of Transportation, or WSDOT, was forced to do this after discovering a buckling support column and other deterioration.
There are dozens of property owners in this area, many of them seniors. The closure left local residents scrambling and created a number of challenges, which quickly presented themselves.
Access was lost to western portions of Mount Rainier National Park. Taylor and his neighbors south of the bridge were largely cut off and were forced to adapt to life without easy access to basic amenities, like medical care and groceries.
“We’re figuring it out one day at a time,” Taylor said. “It’s been kind of an exciting adventure.”
A lonely road
Taylor’s wife, Jill Cartwright, 67, remembered crossing the bridge hours before it closed. On her way home, the bridge was blocked off. That was a shock.
“The first six months, I personally was in fight-or-flight mode, because we didn’t know what was going to happen,” Cartwright said.
The narrow, nine-mile access road snakes through thick woods and can be treacherous.
Residents have to drive slowly along the rough gravel road, which has become notorious for causing flat tires; a full trip up and down can take an hour or more. Drivers have had to dodge big rigs hauling logs out of the forest, and many residents avoid the road at night. All of this, Cartwright said, can make navigating the route stressful. The prospect of breaking down is especially harrowing.
“You’re just kind of in the middle of nowhere,” she explained. “You think of your safety: ‘Can I get home? Do I want to walk out six miles in the dark?’ You’re vulnerable out here.”
Replacement options
There is no quick fix to the dilemma. WSDOT is assessing whether or not to replace the Fairfax Bridge. The agency estimated that it could take six years and $160 million to complete a new bridge.
If the Fairfax Bridge is not replaced, WSDOT may have to compensate residents and other private noncommercial property owners who lose access to their land. A study from the agency estimates this could cost more than $46 million.
Some state lawmakers have advocated for building a new bridge. Bills were introduced during this year’s legislative session to declare the closure an emergency, but those proposals failed to make it out of committee.
Still, lawmakers earmarked funds to help develop an emergency evacuation route for residents south of the bridge. New automatic gates are also being installed, funded by WSDOT and the state Department of Commerce, to make it easier for people with permission to access the logging road.
Pat Mower, 72, has lived south of the bridge for over 50 years. She said losing it has been isolating.
“I have a huge extended family that live in the Puyallup area. We don’t see them any more,” she said. “There’s no birthday parties, fourth of July at our house anymore because it’s just too difficult.”
The bridge closure has been emotional, especially for people who believe it could have been prevented if the state had taken better care of it.
“I have rode over that bridge my whole life and it’s hard to know that it was let go that long,” Mower said.
The bridge had deteriorated after the state postponed preventative maintenance for years. Steel bridges need to be painted regularly to help prevent corrosion. However, the Fairfax Bridge had not been painted for decades due to a lack of funding, according to WSDOT.
“We are given limited funding for preserving infrastructure like bridges, and our repair and replacement needs far exceed the funding levels provided through the Transportation Budget,” an agency blog post said.
The long haul
Locals are preparing to be self-reliant for the foreseeable future. Cartwright got intensive first-aid training that could help her respond to things like gunshot wounds or chainsaw injuries.
She has also gathered emergency supplies including fire extinguishers, bandages and automatic external defibrillators, or AEDs, to help if someone has a heart attack and goes into cardiac arrest.
“No one is going to be up here for an hour to help us,” she said. “So if we’re close enough we may be able to save somebody’s life with the defibrillator.”
A big part of Cartwright's preparations has been building relationships. She recently hosted a group of amateur radio operators who were visiting to help to install radio equipment. Two-way radios, like walkie-talkies, have become an important part of communicating.
“There’s no cell service out here," one of the radio operators, Jamie Renwich, pointed out. "If you check your phone right now there’s nothing.”
It is possible to make phone calls in certain areas if the internet is available, Cartwright said. But locals need a more reliable way to talk to each other and to reach emergency services. With this in mind, Seth Richey, another visiting radio operator, set out to install an antenna in a tree to increase their radio’s broadcast range.
His goal was to “hopefully bring emergency communications into the community and make sure that if something were to go wrong everyone can get help.”
It took a few trips, but the installation was successful.
Home
Mardel Chowen, 76, watched the group while they worked. She has lived here for years, and her family has deep ties to the area. A peace has settled there since the bridge closed, she said.
Thousands of visitors used to drive through every year on their way to remote sections of Mount Rainier National Park and other outdoor destinations. Locals enjoy how quiet it has been over the last year. But with hiking trails and campsites sitting empty, Chowen described the tranquility as bittersweet.
“Hikers, bicyclists, families picnicking down along the river — there’s just so much to do up here,” she said. “It’s quieter, but I didn’t mind the traffic because it meant people were coming here to have fun.”
One bright spot is that she has grown closer to her neighbors. In the past, people mostly kept to themselves. After they lost the bridge, many households banded together.
“We’re definitely more of a community,” she said. If anything goes awry, Chowen is confident she can turn to her neighbors for help. “We’d take care of each other. We know that now,” she said. “I’m not sure we knew that before.”
Some locals fear that they will eventually be forced to leave their homes. Chowen dreads this prospect. She wants to spend the rest of her life here, and when she dies, she wants her ashes spread here, too.
“My mother’s ashes are spread up here. My ex-husband, my soul mate, I spread his ashes up here.” This place, she said, “is a little special to me.”
