If you’ve walked across the unnamed Donkey Creek bridge lately, you may have noticed a sign placed there by the city of Gig Harbor: “Locks Are Prohibited on This Bridge — All Locks Will Be Removed Without Notice.”
For all you lock lovers out there hoping it was a late anti-Valentine’s Day joke, it’s not. The city prohibited placing locks on the bridge, and staff started removing them about three weeks ago.
“The locks on the bridge at Donkey Creek are attached to the wire safety mesh along the pedestrian walkway,” city public works director Jeff Langhelm explained in an email. “These locks add weight and reduce the integrity of this important safety element. This has been documented through the last few bridge inspection reports from Pierce County.”
A few years ago, Gig Harbor Now’s Tonya Strickland wrote about how the dangers the locks pose weigh heavily on city officials’ minds. She highlighted the most famous example of a bridge literally breaking under the weight of love locks: The Pont de Arts in Paris, where a railing lost its battle with the gravity of all it held in 2014…