THE TRAGIC COLLAPSE OF THE SILOAM BRIDGE (Cheri)

Two years ago, Mark and I were tooling the roads northwest of Winston-Salem and happened upon the building I featured in my last blog post.

Photo Credit:  Keith Hall Photography

At the time we hadn't bought a permanent home, hadn't even made a final decision to live in Winston-Salem.

(Photo Credit:  Unknown)

I looked at this building - the historic Marion Brothers Store - and dreamed of building out the upper floor as our home, the lower floor as a quilting studio!

I love coming home after we have been wandering, and seeking out more stories about the areas we've seen, online.  The search that day led to an a story that made national news, and has stuck with me since.

In case it hasn't occurred to you, Mark and I live in the center of historic tobacco country.  Winston-Salem . . . Winston cigarettes, Salem cigarettes.  It is the corporate headquarters for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (and also for its parent company RJR Nabisco until the company moved to the Atlanta area).

Siloam is only about 30 miles from Winston-Salem, and tobacco was the crop grown in the area in the late 1800's and most of the 1900's.  The town sits on the Yadkin River, which limited some of the transportation options for nearby farmers.

The Marion family owned large portions of the area, and sold a strip through their farmland to the railroad, facilitating the creation of a railroad stop in the community.

The railroad stop, and the opening of the Marion Brothers Store in the building above, made the town the place that area tobacco farmers brought crops to in order to ship them to Winston-Salem, and they purchased their supplies there year-round.

In 1861, the Marion family had built this house (shown as added onto and remodeled three more times in the next 100 years):

(Photo Credit:  Unknown)

It was incredibly surprising to find the house in Siloam.  Even now, the community has only about 1,000 residents.

The farmland, the house, and the store stayed in direct-line family ownership until at least 2012, when it was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.

By the mid-1930's it became apparent that a bridge over the Yadkin River was necessary.  People were driving their tobacco to Winston-Salem, rather than using the railroad.  Unfortunately, a truss previously used on a bridge across a lake, and then stored for a period of time, was re-used when the single-lane Siloam Bridge was created.

By then, the granddaughter of the original owners, Ola Atkinson, was living in Marion House with her husband, Hugh. Due to the gradual slope of their property, Hugh and Ola could probably see the bridge from their front porch on a clear day.

Over the next 40 years, time, weather, and some collisions due to tall loads eroded the bridge.  A 1974 inspection report noted that the "Truss is being overloaded terribly."  Someone posted a sign that said "Local Traffic Only."

Locals, including Hugh Atkinson, repeatedly asked to have the bridge repaired, but lack of funds and inadequate Department of Transportation staffing interfered with their efforts.

What initiated the ultimate collapse of the bridge was disputed.  The NTSB determined that the driver of the first car to go off the edge as it fell had hit one of the bridge supports.  That driver claimed that the bridge was falling before his white Thunderbird hit the support.

Hugh and Ola Atkinson [along with their daughter] drove to the bridge that night after hearing people calling for help from it, but by the time they got there, it was too late. It had already given way, and their car ended up submerged in the water.

Hugh and Ola's son Edwin, along with his wife and two children, followed behind them in their own car.

Because of the fog, and the fact that the victims were landing in the river, a total of seven vehicles drove off the the edge of the collapsed bridge over a period of 17 minutes.

Hugh and Ola Atkinson and two others died, and 16 others were injured.

(Photo Credit:  https://tinyurl.com/pn3u7v7j)

For more about the Atkinsons' involvement in the County, you can read this recent newspaper article.

The Siloam community is very small, and largely interrelated.  The son-in-law of a little girl who was in one of the first few cars was sitting, talking with the proprietor of the Marion Brothers Store, as I bought antiques there a few weeks ago.  The Atkinson grandson who was in the second car later became the County Sheriff.

I'd had the feeling that the proprietor was using the Store as a method of selling relatives' and neighbors' belongings as they died over time, and these details make me think I was correct.

Finally, I read a lot about the Marion House itself at Nomination of the Marion House and Marion Brothers Store to the National Register of Historic Places.  (Yep, I'm a history nut.)  I wanted to talk about some of the house's truly unusual architectural details, and changes made during renovations - such as switching the direction of the stairs to the second floor - but decided that the bridge was really where the best story lay.  If you want to read more about Surry County in the 19th and 20th centuries, and love architectural history, delve into its 37 pages here!