Hood River-White Salmon Bridge Replacement

Building a bridge—and public trust

For three years, JLA led all public-facing communications and engagement for the effort to replace the 100-year-old bridge between Hood River, Oregon and White Salmon, Washington. This included creating a brand identity and building awareness for a new government agency, growing local and regional familiarity with the project via multi-media campaigns, and ensuring members of the public had a chance to provide feedback at key points in the project development through a variety of venues. This feedback has supported the community in helping shape the new bridge and feeling ownership of the project.

Communication and public involvement

Close collaboration with representatives and communities on both sides of the bridge was essential to the process of building trust. JLA led community engagement strategy and implementation, and developed public communications for this quickly developing project. Integrated as a core member of the project management team, JLA supported formation of a new public agency, the Hood River-White Salmon Bridge Authority, collaboration of a Bi-State Working Group, and feedback through a Community Aesthetics process.

Because of our work, more community members understand the project, the role of the new agency and the process to build the new bridge.

This work was recognized with a 2025 Community Relations Spotlight Award from PRSA Oregon.

Video produced by Story Gorge as a subconsultant to JLA

Measures of success

More than 50,000 page views on project websites within 12 months, showing community reliance on the sites as trusted sources of information.

60 local/regional media mentions per year on average, demonstrating successful media outreach efforts, leading to name recognition and improved project understanding.

Strong and growing social media reach thanks to frequent and relevant posts. These efforts improved community perception of the project, and gave residents a way to engage directly.

Project events had high participation. Informed and thoughtful comments indicated community understanding and perception of the project growing over time as growing trust.

Rooted in community: This campaign not only spread the word about the bridge replacement process, but also made sure that community values were built into the new agency and decision-making.

Identifying audiences and how to engage them

The team conducted research to identify audiences, including those who may not have interacted with the bridge process previously. Primary public audiences included:

Communities on both sides of the river in Oregon and Washington
People of all income levels, particularly those impacted by the cost of tolls
Bridge users, including those in vehicles and those who rely on other forms of transportation (public transit, biking, walking, mobility aids)
Businesses and industries who rely on the bridge, including farmers and migrant workers
English and Spanish speaking community members

Other audiences that received specific strategic outreach were partner government agencies, River Treaty Tribes, community partners and organizations, and lawmakers.

Tactic highlight: Facebook Live events – Facebook is a key forum for Gorge communities to share information. Seeing this as an important opportunity to build trust, we implemented hybrid Facebook Live events where people could ask questions live or in advance, and participate either on Facebook or via Zoom. Sharing recordings makes these conversations available even more broadly.

Bridge Authority Facebook Live event recordings