A Jim Demetro sculpture of Indian guide Sacajawea and her infant son, “Pomp,” stands near the west shore of Lake Sacajawea. The Shoshone woman camped near here with the rest of the Lewis and Clark Expedition during the autumn of 1805. 

LONGVIEW, Wash. —

Go ahead: Call the people of this southwestern Washington city “nutty.” It’s unlikely they’ll take offense.

You see, there’s a giant sasquatch standing in the middle of its visitor center, where a T-shirt proudly declares, “We’re just a little nuts.” A 10-foot chainsaw sculpture of a squirrel occupies the heart of a historic downtown park. You almost expect to see a sign declaring, “Sacajawea slept here” — because, in fact, she did.

But nothing in this quirky community of 37,000 says “weird” so much as the Nutty Narrows Bridge.

In 1963, a contractor named Amos Peters — a man with a soft spot for squirrels — grieved for the number of his wee friends whose soft spots were turning into roadkill in front of his Olympia Way office. So he did what any sensitive citizen would do: He took an old fire hose, framed it in aluminum and built a 60-foot bridge for the arboreal rodents.

Fifty years later, now nominated for listing on the National Register of Historic Structures, Nutty Narrows continues to serve the local squirrel population. And the Longview Sandbaggers, a civic booster club that loves tongue-in-cheek fun, now maintains a total of five bridges and the wooden squirrel statue. What’s more, its annual August Squirrel Fest has become a focus of pride for the local community.

The ‘City Beautiful’

Located 48 miles north of Portland, Longview lies just off the Interstate 5 corridor that runs through adjacent Kelso and links Oregon to the Seattle metropolis. The city sits at the confluence of the Cowlitz and Columbia rivers, 90 miles inland from the mouth of the Columbia River and 35 miles from volcanic Mount St. Helens.

Explorers Lewis and Clark — accompanied, of course, by native guide Sacajawea — camped here in 1805 en route to their winter refuge at Fort Clatsop. Decades later, in 1848, homesteader Darby Huntington led a party of pioneers up the Cowlitz and filed a claim on riverfront land, naming the settlement Monticello after Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia home.

Longview can lay claim to being the birthplace of Washington state. In 1852, delegates from throughout the Oregon Territory met at Huntington’s homestead and petitioned the federal government to create a separate Washington Territory, north of the Columbia River, from the Oregon Territory. The petition was granted the following year, and Monticello became the seat of Cowlitz County — until it was wiped out by a flood in 1867.

Another half-century passed before the site was resettled. According to information provided by the city of Longview, the Long-Bell Lumber Co. of Kansas City came West in search of a supply of Douglas fir and a location for a large mill near a rail line and a deep-water port. The old Monticello spot was ideal, and in 1918, company chairman Robert Long bought 14,000 acres to build the mill and an adjoining town.

Nationally known planners J.C. Nichols and George Kessler were commissioned to design a large-scale model for a city that might someday be home to 50,000 people. In keeping with the City Beautiful Movement of the turn of the 20th century, their design called for specific districts for business, industry and government, with a network of broad arterial boulevards fanning into residential neighborhoods.

Ground was broken in 1922. Longview was dedicated, and named for R.A. Long, in 1923; it was incorporated in 1924, and most construction was completed by 1927, at a cost to Long-Bell of about $50 million.

Commerce Avenue

Commerce Avenue, which extends between 12th and 14th avenues, was built as the heart of the central business district. With few exceptions, buildings in the four blocks from Hemlock Street to Vandercook Way — multi-story structures with mezzanine levels — date from between 1923 and 1928, and many today are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Years ago, these buildings were home to such 20th-century department stores as J.C. Penney, F.W. Woolworth, Montgomery Ward and Bon Marché. Today the tenants include many vintage shops and an increasing number of hip restaurants and bars.

An exploration of the district might begin and end at the three-story Columbia River Mercantile Building: “The Merk,” as the 1923 building is better known. This was R.A. Long’s first company store, where employees came to buy meat and other groceries as well as clothing. Today, fully restored, it has a variety of shops and restaurants, including the Country Folks Deli and its mezzanine-level fine-dining counterpart, the Vintage Bistro. Historic photos and murals are on each floor, and the Long-Bell Reading Room preserves company archives.

Outside, at the junction of Commerce and Broadway, R.A. Long himself sits on a bench on a center median, cast in bronze in 2006 by sculptor Jim Demetro. Wearing a straw hat and holding a copy of the Longview Daily News, he accepts a “thank you” flower from a young girl.

If Longview’s outdoor art gallery has a central intersection, this is it. Facing the Long statue is a totem pole carved in 1965 by Chief Lelooska of the Cowlitz tribe. There are 14 other sculptures on sidewalks in the area, including two People’s Choice honorees, “Sea Horse” and “Hound Dog,” that Washington artist Dan Klennert shaped from scrap iron.

South of this intersection, the world’s largest steam whistle, “Big Ben” (1923), still stands beside Commerce Street. It once signaled shift changes at the world’s largest lumber mill, capable of cutting a million board feet a day. Outside the former Lumberman’s Bank building, a free-standing pedestal clock (1926) has also been restored.

North of Broadway is the 700-seat Longview Theater (1941), its Art Deco façade reflecting Depression-era style. But the city’s primary thespian venue, now as then, is the 1925 Columbia Theatre for the Performing Arts, at Commerce Street and Vandercook Way. The pipe organ that once provided background music for silent movies and vaudeville shows is long gone, but the theater — restored to the tune of $11.6 million in 2009 — continues to host touring musicals, stage shows and concerts.

A brochure distributed by the Longview Historic Preservation Committee, “Discover the Heart of Longview” has a detailed description of 22 historic downtown sites.

Lake Sacajawea

Longview’s earliest residential neighborhood extended west of Commerce Avenue beyond the civic center, bordering R.A. Long Square and the 1923 Monticello Hotel. It’s hard to miss this six-story structure; although it is now a shadow of its former gracious self, it still offers overnight accommodation as well as extended-stay apartments. It’s worth walking in to check out the ceiling paintings in the lobby and a pair of Native American bronze sculptures.

Less than a mile from the civic center, a marshland known as Fowler’s Slough interrupted the flow of residential streets. City founders saw fit to dredge the bog. Today, in its place, Lake Sacajawea arcs for more than a mile and a half around the western edge of the city center. Embraced within the truly lovely Lake Sacajawea Park; framed on the east and west by tree-lined Kessler and Nichols boulevards, it is considered Longview’s crown jewel.

On any given day, in any season, rain or shine, walkers, joggers and bicyclists enjoy 3½ miles of trails that wind through rhododendron gardens, under landscaped bridges and past spectacular fountains. Those of more leisure may canoe or kayak the calm waters, cast a fishing line or relax with a shoreline picnic.

The gardens of Japanese Island and the greenery of the Frank Willis Arboretum attract a variety of avian life — the Audubon Society has designated a birding trail here — and in summer, a series of Concerts at the Lake lure music lovers. A Jim Demetro bronze on the lake’s western shore, near Hemlock Street, is a fine depiction of Sacajawea herself, carrying her papoose, the infant known to Lewis and Clark as “Pomp,” on her back.

On sunny spring and summer days, it’s not unusual to see many Longview residents enjoying their lunches in the park, perhaps reading a book or watching as young children chase the birds, the chipmunks and the squirrels.

Nutty Narrows

Ah, yes. Those pesky squirrels. Here’s the full story of Nutty Narrows, as related by the Longview Sandbaggers:

Contractor Amos Peters had his office in the 1960s in the Park Plaza building near R.A. Long Square and Lower Columbia College, a two-year institution. Office staff, who often put nuts on the office steps for neighborhood squirrels, were saddened when their furry friends met a demise in traffic. So Peters approached Longview’s City Council with a proposal for a bridge.

Almost to his surprise, it was approved. Peters’ investment was a mere $1,000. Cabled to large trees on each side of Olympic Way, the bridge was an almost instant hit with the squirrel population, even in the days before social media was around to promote it. Not only were there fewer road deaths; by spring, adult squirrels could be seen leading their young to the hose-and-aluminum bridge and teaching them “the ropes.”

By early 1983, two decades after it was built, the bridge was in need of repair. Peters took it down from the trees, replaced the crosspieces and repainted its faded sign. It was rehung in July of that year, and the hoopla was heard all the way to Disneyland: Mickey Mouse, accompanied by Chip ’n’ Dale, joined local dignitaries and 300 schoolchildren in rededicating the Nutty Narrows bridge.

When Peters died in 1984 at the age of 68, his Sandbaggers cohorts commissioned and dedicated a statue in his honor. The 10-foot squirrel still stands where it was placed, on the grounds of the Longview Public Library and within sign of Nutty Narrows. Nearby, the Long-Bell Lumber Company’s historic Shay Locomotive, a 40-ton steam engine, is preserved in a pavilion; it hauled timber from 1924 to 1956, when logging trucks became preferred.

Although I saw no squirrels at Nutty Narrows during my recent visit, the Sandbaggers insist there are plenty around. In fact, on their Squirrel Fest website (www.lvsquirrelfest.com), the civic boosters keep a live camera focused 24 hours a day on the Bruce Kamp Bridge, built in 2011 across Kessler Avenue near Hudson Street. (To be honest, I haven’t seen any nutty nibblers on the webcam, either; the squirrels may be lying low this winter.)

You might look for squirrels at the Nutty Narrows Bridge, Olympia Way between 18th and 19th avenues; the John R. Dick Bridge (2012), Nichols Boulevard near Hemlock Street; the OBEC Bridge (2013), Louisiana Street near 23rd Avenue; or the Safety Awareness Bridge (2015), Kessler Boulevard near 24th Avenue at the north end of Lake Sacajawea.

The environs

If watching for squirrels hasn’t worn you out, there’s plenty more to see in the area. Longview’s thriving industrial sector dominates the city’s Columbia River front south of Industrial Way (Washington State Route 432). The KapStone pulp and paper mill and a Weyerhaeuser timber operation are the largest among many port-area businesses. The Lewis & Clark Bridge, built in 1930, rises above the railyards and crosses the Columbia to Rainier, Oregon, where a viewpoint on U.S. Highway 30 offers a fine fair-weather panorama of Longview.

Longview’s sister city is Kelso, with a population of about 12,000. This is the community that most Interstate 5 travelers see when they travel between Portland and Seattle. A regional shopping center, the Three Rivers Mall, is just off the interstate’s Exit 39, where a variety of motels and franchise restaurants are also located — along with the regional visitor center and its giant sasquatch.

Kelso’s traditional downtown, however, is along First Avenue and Pacific Avenue on the east bank of the Cowlitz River, a mile or so west of the freeway. The 1911 Burlington Northern railroad depot now serves local and national bus lines as well as Amtrak. Nearby is the Cowlitz County Museum, since 1949 this area’s finest repository of early pioneer artifacts, historic photos and traveling exhibits from the Smithsonian Institution.

Kelso is also a gateway to Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. The foremost route into the preserve is State Route 504, which exits I-5 east at Castle Rock, just 10 miles north of Kelso. The drive to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, at the foot of the crater, takes more than an hour, but travelers without a lot of time can watch a movie and learn the basics about the massive 1980 eruption at the Silver Lake Visitor Center, just five minutes off I-5.

— Reporter: janderson@bendbulletin.com.