When a West Virginia Town Asked the Soviet Union for a Bridge
The town of Vulcan in West Virginia is a small community that started and flourished thanks to coal mining. The town was relatively closed off from the outside world, with only one bridge connecting it to the rest of the United States. In 1975, that bridge collapsed. The residents of Vulcan asked their state government for a new bridge, but it was denied due to a lack of traffic.
Without another option, they started using a railroad gravel road — which was both illegal and dangerous. Despite the law-breaking, the government of West Virginia did not want to rebuild Vulcan’s fallen bridge.
Two years after the bridge’s collapse, John Robinette, Vulcan’s mayor, was desperate. The conditions were dire — there was no legal way to get into or out of his city, and his state was ignoring the situation.
Since his government didn’t listen to his pleas, Robinette decided to try asking another government.
And so it was, at the height of the cold war, that the mayor of a small American town requested foreign aid from the Soviet Union.
It was an act that gained national attention and caught Soviet officials by surprise. The Soviet Union, seeing the chance to cast the US in a bad light, sent their journalists to Vulcan at once.
But at this point, the West Virginia government was more open to helping out their municipality. They immediately committed $1.3 million to build a new bridge for the residents of Vulcan.
Though visibly not busy with traffic, the bridge remains the only way to get into or out of Vulcan to this day.
