Ah, but have you touched Gertie’s actual concrete decking? Or the camera that took those famous shots of her collapse? And just how much do you know about rooster racing? (Yes, it’s connected.)

The answers are all in a new show opening Sunday at the Washington State History Museum.

“Bridging the Narrows,” organized by the Washington State Historical Society in collaboration with The News Tribune, follows the tale of the three bridges across the Tacoma Narrows via images and artifacts. It’s a tale of hope, determination, failure and success.

“This story is a combination of nature, politics and technique,” explains curator Redmond J. Barnett, head of exhibitions at the history museum. Pulling an impressive quantity of photographs, videos and objects from the collections of the WSHS, the Gig Harbor Historical Society, the University of Washington and The News Tribune, Barnett has illustrated the three elements at every turn.

In the lead-up to Gertie’s 1940 completion, for example, there are artist’s renderings from an optimistic Tacoma Times front page and photographs of the ferries that began plying the crossing in the 1930s. If you wanted to get across before that, you rowed: A wooden, double-ended skiff from the late 1800s stands below a 1900 photograph of Mary Goodman rowing her two young sons across the channel and an image of Indian canoes.

There’s also a handy explanation of just why the Narrows is so difficult either to row or to bridge: tidal currents up to eight knots, vortices created by bridge caissons, funneled winds. There are details of the federal financial backing for a bridge that would connect the military bases at Bremerton and Fort Lewis. Tragically hilarious, there’s even video footage of the Kitsap Peninsula rooster races included as part of Gertie’s opening celebrations.

Then, of course, there’s the collapse on Nov. 7, 1940. As well as minute-by-minute images by James Bashford of the swaying, buckling and breaking up, there’s Bashford’s Graphlex RB-D camera, and testimonies by News Tribune copy editor Leonard Coatsworth, who lost his Studebaker and dog to the waters but got the story of a lifetime, and TNT photographer Howard Clifford, who was snapping even as he felt the decking buckle underneath his feet. There’s video: the famous one, taken by The Camera Shop owners, of Gertie’s construction and collapse, and underwater footage of the ruins.

There’s even a piece of Gertie’s concrete decking, retrieved from the beach by the state Department of Transportation, set below a wall-size enlargement of the broken bridge’s vertiginous drop into the mist.

Construction of the second bridge, in the 1940s, is illustrated by images and Cold War artifacts. Construction of the new span contrasts bird’s-eye panoramas by News Tribune photographer Dean J. Koepfler with images of picketing protesters, bridge-inspired artwork by Virna Haffer with bridge-decorated Brown and Haley chocolate boxes, and toll tickets from the ’60s with current blueprints.

As Barnett says, “This exhibition put something everybody knows about into a context not everybody knows about.”

What: “Bridging the Narrows”

When: Opens Saturday and runs through Nov. 18; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesdays, Fridays-Saturdays; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursdays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays

Where: Washington State History Museum, 1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma

Admission: $6-$8; ages 5 and under free; free admission 5-8 p.m. Thursdays

Information: 253-272-3500, 1-888-BE-THERE, www.washingtonhistory.org

Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568

rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com