Silver Bridge Memorial

The Silver Bridge collapsed on December 15, 1967, killing 46 people when a single eyebar cracked from stress corrosion, sending 31 vehicles into the Ohio River. The disaster is permanently linked to the Mothman legend, as the creature was sighted dozens of times in Point Pleasant for the thirteen months before the collapse, then vanished completely the day the bridge fell.

Forty-six people died in ninety seconds on December 15, 1967, when the Silver Bridge dropped into the Ohio River during rush hour. Two of them were never found.

The Point Pleasant Bridge, known as the Silver Bridge for its aluminum paint, was an eyebar-chain suspension bridge built in 1928 connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to Gallipolis, Ohio. On that December evening, a single eyebar in the suspension chain snapped. The failure cascaded through the entire structure. Thirty-one vehicles fell into the frigid river. The National Transportation Safety Board later traced the collapse to a tiny crack that had developed through stress corrosion in one 2-inch-thick eyebar link, a defect invisible to the inspection methods of the era.

The memorial stands at one of the major intersections of downtown Point Pleasant, at the exact spot where the road once approached the bridge to cross the river. It commemorates the 46 victims by name. The collapse reshaped federal bridge inspection law in America. Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968 partly in response, establishing national standards for bridge inspection that hadn't existed before.

But the Silver Bridge disaster is inseparable from the creature that preceded it. For thirteen months before the collapse, from November 1966 to December 1967, residents of Point Pleasant reported encounters with something that defied explanation. On November 15, 1966, two young couples, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, were driving a black 1957 Chevy near the abandoned TNT area north of town when they spotted two large red eyes reflecting their headlights. The creature attached to those eyes stood six to seven feet tall, had a wingspan of roughly ten feet, and red eyes about two inches in diameter spaced six inches apart. The Point Pleasant Register ran the story the next day under the headline "Couples See Man-Sized Bird... Creature... Something."

Over the following year, dozens of similar sightings poured in. The creature became known as the Mothman. Writer John Keel investigated the reports and later published The Mothman Prophecies, connecting the sightings to the bridge disaster and a broader pattern of paranormal events in the area. His book became a 2002 film starring Richard Gere.

The day the bridge fell, the Mothman sightings stopped. Thirteen months of encounters, dozens of witnesses, then nothing. Whatever was watching Point Pleasant left the moment forty-six people hit the water. The NTSB found a cracked eyebar. They never explained the timing.

Point Pleasant has embraced the connection fully. A twelve-foot stainless steel Mothman statue stands downtown, sculpted by Bob Roach. The Mothman Museum documents the sightings, the bridge collapse, and the cultural phenomenon that followed. The annual Mothman Festival, which started in 2002, draws thousands of visitors each year.

The two victims whose bodies were never recovered from the Ohio River were Robert Towe and William Edmondson. Divers searched for weeks in the freezing water and wreckage. The river never gave them back. Their names are on the memorial alongside the other forty-four, but their families never had a burial.