State legislature establishes Washington Toll Bridge Authority in March 1937.

  • By Paula Becker
  • Posted 1/19/2005
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 7214
See Additional Media

In March 1937, the Washington State Legislature enacts a new highway code, which establishes the Washington Toll Bridge Authority. The Director of Highways is named the Chief Engineer of the Toll Bridge Authority.

To Build a Bridge

The Toll Bridge Authority was "empowered to establish and construct toll bridges, issue bonds for the financing thereof, and collect tolls for the retirement of financing obligations" (Seventeenth Biennial Report).

The first act of the Toll Bridge Authority was to purchase the Bremerton-East Bremerton Bridge connecting Bremerton and Manette, previously a privately owned toll bridge. The tolls generated on the bridge enabled the Authority to recover the purchase price within a year and a half. The toll was then lifted.

The Toll Bridge Authority next began construction of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge (or Mercer Island Bridge) and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Bonds on the bridges were to be paid off solely by tolls and did not constitute indebtedness for the state of Washington. 

The Lake Washington Floating Bridge opened in July 1940 with a toll, which was lifted in 1943 after bridge costs had been recovered. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which also opened in July 1940, collapsed during a heavy windstorm on November 7, 1940.


Sources:

Seventeenth Biennial Report of the Director of Highways, 1936-1938 (Olympia: State Printing Plant, 1938), 29; Eighteenth Biennial Report of the Director of Highways, 1938-1940 (Olympia: State Printing Plant, 1940), 29, 39; James R. Warren, The War Years: A Chronicle of Washington State in World War II (Seattle: History, Inc., 2000), 63.


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You