https://blueridgecountry.com/newsstand/magazine/curios-the-bridge-the-soviets-nearly-built/

• Story summary: both capitalists and capitalist owned state governments refused to help a West Virginian town, so the locals decided to play on red scare fears to get the help they needed.

In the 1970s, the tiny West Virginia community of Vulcan became so desperate for a crossing into Kentucky that they reached out to Russia.

The tiny West Virginia community of Vulcan sits on Mingo County’s border with Kentucky, surrounded by mountains on three sides and the Tug River on the other. Once Vulcan was a booming coal town, but its real claim to fame is the bridge linking it to the outside world, a bridge that was almost built by the Russians to insult the U.S. some 40 years ago.

Translation: the Soviets cared more for humanity than the U.S to the point they’d even go across the world and help the desperate people in their forsworn enemy.

The 50 or so families of Vulcan went for nearly six years without a passable bridge—or a legal road. They had no safe way to drive out of town after the bridge that had been built by the coal company collapsed in 1974. The only way people could get in and out was to drive up the Kentucky side of the Tug and walk across a narrow swinging bridge. For years, John Robinette, Vulcan’s self-appointed mayor, pleaded with coal companies and legislators at all levels for a rebuild. They all said there was no money.

That’s right, the moment there was no longer any profit to be made the capitalists and their puppets in the state government abandoned the workers there and washed their hands of any responsibility. Though it should be pointed out that they wouldn’t have taken any responsibility anyways even if there was still some water in the rocks left to squeeze out.

The situation was dire. Children had to crawl under parked railroad cars at the railroad’s bridge to get to school. A kid lost a leg doing that. A few motorists tried to take the railroad right of way over the river to the roads in Kentucky, but there wasn’t much room next to the live tracks. Twice, elderly couples flinched, jerked their trucks, and ended up in the river. The railroad began prosecuting anyone caught on their property.

That’s right there still was technically a way out of town but any attempt to use it hurts the profits of the shareholders. Which is why if little Timmy tries to go to school he’ll get beaten black and blue by the cops for violating the sacred law of private property!

Robinette and the town were losing patience with their government. A bartender and carnival worker who flew Old Glory over his trailer, Robinette was ready for a drastic move. In 1977, he wrote the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC, as well as officials in Communist East Germany, describing Vulcan’s plight and requesting foreign aid for a bridge. The Soviets savored the opportunity to embarrass the U.S. and dispatched a journalist, Iona Andronov, to Vulcan. Andronov said the Soviets would fund the bridge if the American government did not.

Translation: Upon receiving a letter of desperation from Mr. Robinette, the Soviets elected to investigate the material conditions of the town of Vulcan in order to assess and present their needs to the appropriate extra-national non-governmental aid organizations.

By witnessing and broadcasting the locals’ woes, the Soviet journalist finally brought attention to the ignored community. Within hours of Andronov’s visit on Dec. 16, 1977, word came down from Gov. Jay Rockefeller that West Virginia was working with Kentucky to build a new bridge.

That’s right, former re-scum-ican turned demon-rat great-grandson of robber baron John D Rockefeller was the governor of West Virginia at this time.

Newspapers across the nation were talking about Vulcan’s appeal to the Kremlin. Some fervent anti-communists were not amused. Local newspapers and radio stations in West Virginia received threats that any bridge built with Red aid would be blown up.

Goddamn terrorists would literally prefer children getting ran over by trains and old people drowning in rivers rather than letting the Communists build something as harmless as a bridge. Literal bridge burners who say better dead than red, may they find an appropriately painful way to fulfill it.

But Rockefeller kept his promise. Two years later, on July 4, 1980, the 300-ft bridge was dedicated. It had cost over $1 million, the costs split between Kentucky and West Virginia. According to news reports, Vulcan residents celebrated with illegally imported Russian vodka and the American flag hung high.

Note that this happened on 4th of July. The good people of Vulcan figured out the best way to celebrate their new bridge and next 4th of July so will I when I dedicate a drink to the memory of the Soviets.