The Washington Toll Bridge Authority was created in 1937 by the Washington State Legislature, with a mandate to finance, construct and operate toll bridges.
The first act of the Authority was to purchase the Manette Bridge, previously a privately owned toll bridge. The Authority next began construction of the Lake Washington Floating 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, earned the name Galloping Gertie when it collapsed during a heavy windstorm on November 7, 1940.
Famous quotes containing the words washington, toll, bridge and/or authority:
““If Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways or lose his next election. Only fools and theorists imagine that our society can be handled with gloves or long poles. One must make one’s self a part of it. If virtue won’t answer our purpose, we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office, and this was as true in Washington’s day as it is now, and always will be.””
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,
one is at the aquarium tending a seal,
one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,
one is at the toll gate collecting,
one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,
one is straddling a cello in Russia....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”
—Audre Lorde (1934–1992)
“When the nature of the thing is incomprehensible, I can acquiesce in the Scripture: but when the signification of words is incomprehensible, I cannot acquiesce in the authority of a Schoolman.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)