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Fairfax Bridge Closure The 103-year-old bridge is closed to pedestrian and vehicle traffic after structural issues were found, cutting off a popular access to Mount Rainier National Park.
Every time Jill and Kent Cartwright leave their house nestled in the Carbon Canyon, their cars return caked in dirt and dust. The only route to nearby Wilkeson is through a 9-mile, winding dirt road. The driver has to navigate several twists and turns, and step out twice during the drive to unlock two gates along the way. The drive takes half an hour to an hour, depending on where the resident lives. Before the bridge closure, it took them about 20 minutes to get to Wilkeson.
“You have to reach your hands up into these logging gates and then you have to open the gate, drive through, get out, and shut the gate behind you,” Jill Cartwright said. After they get home, the couple has to hose off their cars to prevent the dirt and dust from settling into their brakes.
This route became the only way for property owners to leave their houses after the Washington State Department of Transportation permanently closed the state Route 165 Carbon River Fairfax Bridge on April 22 due to safety risks. The steel supports of the 103-year-old, single-lane bridge were deteriorating. It was the only way for the public to easily access popular areas of Mount Rainier National Park such as Mowich Lake, Spray Park, the Carbon Glacier Trail and Tolmie Peak.
Since the bridge closure, the couple have had to close their campground business and find creative ways to take care of themselves and their neighbors. “[Our neighbors are] just learning how to take care of each other, communicate with each other and be there for each other,” Cartwright said. ‘He can’t just have that spontaneity’ Cartwright and her husband, Kent, have been living in the Carbon Canyon for 22 years.
It started when their friend unexpectedly died in a motor vehicle accident, and the couple bought his property five months later. Their property is about 10 minutes away from the bridge. “It was like kismet — things just lined up and that’s how we ended up there,” Cartwright said. “I grew up in the ‘70s and so this lifestyle is not foreign to me, but it’s very satisfying.”
Since then, they have created a home of their own. In their living room, they have piles of wood they cut. Their fridge has crops they grow outside year round, with lettuce and salad things during the summer. Some of their friend’s artwork still hangs on the living room walls. Trails the couple have established crisscross across the 18-acre property.
Jill and Kent Cartwright, who live on the far side of the now-closed Fairfax Bridge and must take rough forestry roads to reach town, at their home, on Monday, June 2, 2025, in Carbonado, Wash. They have roughly 20 neighbors in an 8-mile radius as well as their intern, Daniel Pollman, who lives with them from March to October. The Cartwrights — who are 72 and 66, respectively — posted a listing online six years ago, and 38-year-old Pollman has interned with them ever since. “[My internship is] logging and firewood and landscaping and gardening and chainsaws,” Pollman said. “I just feel happier and healthier and stronger when I’m up here. … All of the things that I’m learning, all these different skills of living this way, it kind of changes how you feel you’re seated in the world.”
The detour to reach the Carbon Canyon is south of the bridge, and it’s not open to the public. “[It’s about] not having friends over,” Cartwright said. “I have a daughter who lives in Buckley – she can’t come up and see us, I have to meet her in town.” Cara Mitchell, spokesperson for WSDOT, confirmed with The News Tribune that no one except first responders and local property owners are allowed to use the detour. Cartwright said she and her husband have seen this closure coming for a long time, since WSDOT has reduced the bridge’s weight limits in the past. However, the news of the closure still took them by surprise. “It just got abruptly shut down in one day,” Cartwright said. “An email was sent out from WSDOT about 1:30 in the afternoon and by 4 p.m., 5 p.m., the barricades were up and the bridge was closed — it was so abrupt and immediate.” Residents’ landlines haven’t worked since a storm in November, she said, and they don’t get cell reception.
The only way they can call anyone is by making the 30-minute drive to Wilkeson. “[My neighbor], who has terrible arthritis and who walks with a little walker, he used to be able to get in his truck and drive down to town, buy some beer or whatever and come back up,” Cartwright said. “And now he can’t do that. He can’t just have that spontaneity, ‘Hey, I can go for a drive.’ And it’s devastating.” Another one of her neighbors used to volunteer at food banks and historical societies – but has had to stop because the 30-minute drive on the dirt road is too hard on her car. ‘It’s going to be a little tight’ This would have been the couple’s sixth year of running Lo Tahoma, a collection of campsites on their property that were open from May to October. Cartwright said one of the best things about Lo Tahoma was getting to meet people from all over the world and bond over the connection with the land.
Jill Cartwright, who lives on the far side of the now-closed Fairfax Bridge and must take rough forestry roads to reach town, walks the property, on Monday, June 2, 2025, in Carbonado, Wash. “We just felt like we needed to share our property and open up a campsite to give people a safe, private place to just kind of be their home base,” Cartwright said. “We had honeymooners from Spain who would come to our campsite, we met so many interesting people … it’s kind of like having a barn, you just open up the door and people can come in.” Cartwright said she asked WSDOT if they could allow their clients to use the detour to access the campsite, but they said no.
There are five different landowners who own the logging road — including Pierce County Parks and Recreation and the White River School District — and permission from all five landowners is required to use it. Right now, the detour route is only open to law enforcement and local property owners. The couple was already 25% booked by the beginning of March, Cartwright said, and they had to call all of their clients individually and tell them about the bridge closure. Both of them are retired and rely on Social Security and Cartwright’s pension from her old job at Pierce County Libraries — but the loss of income from Lo Tahoma still impacts them.
“Even though we own our home and our property, the campsite paid for our property taxes which enable us to be able to stay there and live there and live the way we want to live,” Cartwright said. “So yeah, it’s going to be a little tight.” It might impact Pollman’s internship. “We pay him a small stipend and give him a place to live, and he’s become a friend and a companion — he’s part of the family,” Cartwright said. “He helps us as we age, just doing chores and maintaining chores, splitting firewood. He will stay with us this year, it’s not going to jeopardize that, but it’s going to make it a little harder to budget him in and take care of him the way we’d like to.”
The remote road and lack of cell reception make it hard for law enforcement to reach residents if they have a medical emergency. Carly Cappetto, spokesperson for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, said the bridge closure adds about 20-30 minutes to a first responder’s response time. “[The bridge closure] changes how it feels — like, kind of your horizon of, like, ‘What am I going to do today? What am I going to do in the next couple of weeks?’” Pollman said. “It definitely makes you more conscious of being out here and if something happens or someone is not getting out to you as fast — so you’re a little more careful.” Cartwright and her neighbors attended a two-hour class from Pierce County Emergency Management, which taught them first aid, CPR and more. PCEM confirmed to The News Tribune that they added this class after the bridge closure.
“This isn’t just Band-Aids, this is, like, chainsaw laceration,” Cartwright said about the emergency scenarios the class covered. Kent Cartwright, who lives on the far side of the now-closed Fairfax Bridge and must take rough forestry roads to reach town, walks the property, on Monday, June 2, 2025, in Carbonado, Wash.
Carbon Canyon residents also learned how to use automated external defibrillators (AEDs), portable devices that bring someone’s heartbeat back when they experience cardiac arrest. The Food and Drug Administration says using an AED and conducting CPR within the first few minutes of cardiac arrest can save someone’s life. After the class, the county gave the neighbors two AEDs — one belonging to a resident on Mowich Road and another belonging to one of Cartwright’s nearby neighbors. Neighbors are currently working out a system on how to use radios and air horns to communicate with each other in the event of an emergency.
“If you need our help, you blow that air horn — the (residents with) AEDs on their porch will run down,” Cartwright said. “It will probably take us a couple minutes to get down there, but we could definitely hear the air horn.” ‘It’s sad that all of these public lands are being shut off to the public’ Cartwright is also the president of Friends of the Carbon Canyon, an organization that advocates for the Carbon Canyon. In early May, she was one of the key players in a letter writing campaign to U.S. Rep Kim Schrier about the bridge closure.
The campaign ended with 100 letters being sent in 48 hours. When Cartwright shared news of the campaign to the Friends of the Carbon Canyon Facebook page, it got more than 300 shares. “As a resident, as a human being, it’s sad that all of these public lands are being shut off to the public, when this really could have been preventable,” Cartwright said. Friends of the Carbon Canyon also applied for a $15,000 grant from the Puget Sound Energy Foundation, which Cartwright said she’d use to get more equipment like defibrillators.
When The News Tribune visited Cartwright at her home, she was preparing to attend one of WSDOT’s in-person open houses later that day. She said she and her husband are keeping a close eye on what WSDOT decides to do, and then they will get a better sense of how this will affect their lives in the long term. WSDOT is considering rebuilding the bridge and other alternatives, all of which the agency says would take many years and cost millions. The most expensive option would cost up to $785 million, WSDOT said.
The most important thing right now, Cartwright said, is rallying together. “We’re pretty close with a lot of our neighbors — we get together, have potlucks, listen to music, sit around the campfire,” Cartwright said. She said maintaining those neighborly bonds is key to getting through this bridge closure. “In a way, for the bridge to be closed, it’s bringing us together as a community,” Cartwright said.