Silver Bridge Site
On the evening of December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge's 1,460-foot suspended span fell into the Ohio River with rush-hour traffic on it, killing 46 people. Investigators traced the collapse to a single cracked eyebar, and writer John Keel later tied it to the Mothman sightings of 13 months earlier.
Field Guide Entry
The Silver Bridge was an eyebar-chain suspension bridge built in 1928, carrying U.S. Route 35 across the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio. On the evening of December 15, 1967, with rush-hour traffic backed up across its full length, the bridge's entire 1,460-foot suspended span collapsed into the river in under a minute, taking 31 of the 37 vehicles on the bridge with it. Forty-six people died; two bodies were never recovered.
A multi-year federal investigation traced the collapse to a single failed eyebar in the north suspension chain, a structural link that had developed a microscopic stress crack around one of its pins, invisible to the inspection methods of the time. Because the bridge's chain links relied on just two eyebars apiece rather than several, the failure of that one bar threw its full load onto its twin, which gave way within seconds. The disaster led directly to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968, which created the first national bridge inspection standards in the country. In the years after, writer John Keel folded the collapse into his account of the Mothman sightings, noting that it came almost exactly 13 months after the first reported encounter at the nearby TNT Area and framing the creature's appearances as a kind of warning that went unheeded.
Engineers and historians treat the collapse as a fully explained mechanical failure with no need for any other cause, and trace the link between the bridge and the Mothman sightings to books, among them Gray Barker's 1970 The Silver Bridge. The two events share a town and a rough timeframe, but the "omen" reading was assembled in hindsight rather than reported at the time.
Visiting Information
A riverfront park now occupies the site of the 1967 collapse, with walking paths and river views, a short walk from the Mothman Museum and statue downtown.
Field Gallery
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Community Notes
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Mothman Museum
0 miOn November 15, 1966, two Point Pleasant couples said a winged, red-eyed creature chased their car at up to 105 mph near the old TNT Area. The Silver Bridge fell 13 months to the day later, and the federal investigation traced the collapse to a flawed eyebar. The museum, opened in 2006, displays the eyewitnesses' handwritten police depositions.
TNT Area
4 miThe abandoned World War II ordnance works north of Point Pleasant where the first Mothman sightings were reported in November 1966.
Great Serpent Mound
71 miNorth America's largest serpent-shaped earthwork stretches a quarter mile along an Ohio ridge. Archaeologists have argued for over a century about which ancient culture built it, and when. A 1991 radiocarbon study pointed to the Fort Ancient culture; a 2014 study revived the older Adena attribution.
The Flatwoods Monster
79 miOn the evening of September 12, 1952, a group of boys, a mother named Kathleen May, and a 17-year-old National Guardsman walked up a hill outside Flatwoods to look at something that had come down. Braxton County has since built a free museum and a set of giant monster chairs on what they said they saw.
