Originally published in the Voice of the Valley, May 17, 2016
By Bill Kombol
The Kummer Bridge was built from June 1932 to October 1933 to provide a more direct route between Black Diamond and Enumclaw. Can you imagine a bridge of this height (155 feet above the Green River); width (28 feet); and span (688 feet) being built in a mere 17 months today?
Originally called the Kummer Cut-off Bridge, it is now officially known as the Dan Evans/Green River Bridge, but often called the SR-169 or High Bridge. Its namesake, Kummer, was a nearby coal and clay mining community.
This photo was taken by Thomas Blum, a licensed surveyor, who also served as bridge inspector for King County from 1924 – 1934. During the early 1930s, Blum traveled throughout the county inspecting and photographing bridges. He had an artist’s eye for composition and detail and photographed hundreds of county bridges.
This photo, looking south to the Enumclaw side of the bridge, shows the wooden forms being set for a concrete pour. The thin line, which appears in the top center, is not a photo defect but a highline used to move materials in the days before cranes became common.
This photo comes courtesy of the King County Department of Transportation road files #474.11.12.
My dad Bill Petchnick was Born in Kummer in 1910 as well as his sister Mary in 1911. Their sister Sylvia was born on the farm in Enumclaw 5 years later. Daddy told us about the bridge being built, very interesting.
Althea Petchnick Craig
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What was the exact date that official name of Kummer bridge changed to Dan Evan’s Bridge?
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From WSDOT: We were not able to pinpoint an exact date for you, but we got as close as we could get. Our bridge engineers checked through some historical bridge files and found that the earliest occurrence of the name change in the files was on a 1985 bridge inspection report. I took a look at our bridge lists from 1977 (the last year of Dan Evan’s governorship) through 1987 to corroborate these findings. I found that the bridge was listed as Green River from 1977 to 1985 and then as Green River/Dan Evans in 1987. After 1985, the lists were published every two years so 1987 was the next list after 1985. This supports the bridge file evidence that the name change occurred in or around 1985. At the very least, a circa 1985 date for the name change would be accurate.
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