Every August, the city of Longview, Washington has its annual Squirrel Fest — how cool is that? This year, I made it to Squirrel Fest for the first time. I even took the tour to see all the squirrel bridges… but more on that in a moment.

On my way in, I came across Longview’s giant squirrel statue.

Right next to it is a steam-powered train (which doesn’t actually go anywhere), and that’s where the steam is coming from in this photo.

Looking at the inscription at the base of the statue, I saw that it was in memory of Amos J. Peters, the person who donated Longview’s first squirrel bridge in 1963.

Then I came to the trailer welcoming everyone to the festivities.

Of course Squirrel Fest isn’t the Olympics or anything, but security was on duty.

In the main area, there were all sorts of cool things going on, including a parade, lots of merchants’ and sponsors’ booths, a big area for kids, and a stage. There was a gigantic squirrel named Sandy McNutt roaming the grounds, cheerfully mingling with people thoughout. As you can see here, he (or she — squirrels are not sexually dimorphic) was happy to dance with people too.

One of the booths featured this gigantic knitted squirrel, which must’ve taken quite a while to make! You can gauge the size of it by the stapler and the pen that are also on the table.

And of course, there was plenty of pro-squirrel sentiment to go ’round.

One of the big attractions for me was the trolley tour to see all of Longview’s squirrel bridges. For each of them, I’ll give both a close-up and a wide angle photo showing how the bridge fits into the surroundings.

The original squirrel bridge (believed to be world’s first squirrel bridge) is the Nutty Narrows Bridge, built in 1963. According to the official Squirrel Fest pamphlet, Peters built the bridge “after seeing squirrels attempting to cross Olympia Way from the Library grounds to the Old West Side Neighborhood”. What an awesome idea!

It was quite a hot day out for Squirrel Fest, so comically enough the squirrels had the good sense mostly just to stay cool in their trees. For the most part, they steered clear of the event in honor of them. However, in some wandering that I did after I left the main area, I did manage to spot a lone squirrel scurrying around in a park.

That squirrel didn’t stay long in the grass though. In just a few moments the squirrel had scampered up a nearby tree and who knows where from there — maybe off to a squirrel bridge!