This is a blog version of a Facebook posting.

Here’s a short summary about the Siloam Bridge Collapse, that we learned about this week. 

This happened on Sunday night, February 23, 1975, in Siloam, NC, on the border of Surry and Yadkin counties, in the community of Siloam. At about 9:25 p.m. in heavy fog, a car struck a supporting beam of the steel-truss bridge over the Yadkin River. The 387-foot long, 64-foot high single-lane bridge (built in 1938) buckled and collapsed.

Driver James T. Venable, 46, of Winston-Salem remembered “one second I was driving along and the next second I was flying through the air.” He didn’t remember hitting anything, reported the next day’s Winston-Salem Journal.

There were other vehicles on the bridge as well as others approaching, unaware of the collapse. A total of five automobiles, a pick-up truck, and a “Jeepster” went into the river. Four people were killed and sixteen injured, the newspaper reported.

The first emergency unit to arrive was from Fall Creek Volunteer Fire Department. Subsequent arriving agencies included Pilot Mountain Rescue Squad and recently formed Yadkin County Rescue Squad.  

Fire and rescue units from four counties responded over the course of the incident, from Surry, Yadkin, Stokes, and Forsyth.

That’s the a short summary. Read more below. 

More Information

Read newspaper articles from the Winston-Salem Journal and the Sentinel in this Google Drive folder.

See also these photos from the Winston-Salem Journal, in this retrospective.

Read another retrospective in this Abandoned, NC, blog posting.