It all started with a dead squirrel and a nut.

In 1963, Longview, Washington architect Amos Peters helped create what became the Nutty Narrows Squirrel Pedestrian Bridge after he and colleagues at the Park Plaza office building on Olympia Way often saw squirrels being run over by cars.

One day, Peters found a dead squirrel with a nut in his mouth, and he and his colleagues decided to intervene. They formed a committee and asked the City Council for approval to build a bridge for squirrels crossing the street for food.

The first Nutty Narrows bridge was 60 feet long, made from aluminium and fire hose, and cost $1,000. The city of Longview said the bridge soon became a tourist attraction, and officials began receiving reports that squirrels were using it to cross the road, including escorting their young.

After the bridge drew newspaper coverage around the world, Peters began receiving fan mail, according to a Longview blog post. “One man wrote, ‘Little men take time to cater to big people who might do them good. Only big men pause to aid little creatures,’” the blog post said.

Longview now has nine squirrel bridges in operation. The original bridge still stands on Olympia Way, after it was taken down and repaired in 1983 following 20 years of use.

Longview said Chip and Dale and Mickey Mouse came from Disneyland with 300 children to re-dedicate the bridge. Four years later, Peters died, and a 10-foot wooden squirrel sculpture was added to the original bridge in his honour.

The idea has now spread to nearby Duvall. As of July 2026, the city has its own squirrel bridge, led by resident Nikita Kozhekin, who lives next to the crossing and told KING 5 News he had watched squirrels repeatedly race across the road.

“It’s a major hazard for all wild animals, the road crossings,” Kozhekin told the station.

He said the bridge also helps drivers, because people often swerve when they see a squirrel in the road.

Kozhekin said he was pushed to act after seeing a Douglas squirrel killed by a driver on his street while carrying a hazelnut taken from his yard.

“All she wanted was to carry the hazelnut across the street and hide it somewhere. Is that really too much to ask?” Kozhekin wrote on his website.

He said he tearfully buried the squirrel in a flower pot in his yard.

“Douglas squirrels are small squirrels native and endemic to the Pacific Northwest coastal areas,” he wrote. “In fact, they are not found anywhere else in the world. They need protection , as do all squirrels and all animals.”

To get the bridge built, Kozhekin said he spoke with city council members, the mayor and the director of public works. He wrote that the project needed a right-of-way permit, approval from neighbouring property owners, a licensed contractor and an arborist approved by the city.

He contacted about 80 engineers before finding contractor Andrey Pilat. After further administrative and engineering reviews, the Douglas B. Squirrel Memorial Bridge was approved.

“We did a bunch of research and we came up with this idea that this rope will hold that weight,” Pilat told KING 5 News. “The bridge itself is 80 feet long and about 16 feet off the ground.”

The Duvall bridge is a simple rope stretched between two trees. Kozhekin said squirrels found it after a week and now use it often. He also set up a trail camera and posted footage of the crossings on social media.

“Imagine a world where every tree on every street is connected by bridges, where millions of crossings span the sky, and habitats are safe and connected,” Kozhekin wrote on his website. “How wonderful would that be?”

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