One-of-a-kind Salmon Bone Bridge reopens over recovering Seattle creek

A unique West Seattle pedestrian bridge designed to resemble salmon bones reopened last week.

The dark rusty-red bridge, tucked south of the Dragonfly Garden and Pavilion in the Delridge neighborhood, crosses Longfellow Creek. In the fading early evening light Sunday, people stopped to let their dogs run around on the grassy hill sloping above the bridge as birds twittered and the creek trickled by below.

Coho and chum salmon can indeed be found in the creek below, though they have long struggled to migrate upstream as the waterway has been “modified by decades of development and pollution,” according to Puget Soundkeeper Alliance. But there have been efforts to restore salmon populations there. The number of observed salmon in the creek nearly doubled between surveys in fall 2023 and 20