Bellingham’s iconic I-5 rock smashed into pieces by WSDOT. Here’s what to know

The 100-ton boulder that served as a community message board along Interstate 5 for nearly 60 years has been destroyed. The Washington State Department of Transportation broke the rock into pieces rather than relocating it, despite community efforts to preserve the landmark.

FULL STORY: WSDOT quietly broke Bellingham’s I-5 boulder into pieces; it won’t be relocated

Here are key takeaways:

• WSDOT broke the rock into roughly 100 pieces, according to Keith Cook, who manages the Bellingham Rock page on Facebook. Cook said the fragments are too small to create a meaningful replacement.
• The rock stood in the way of a $160 million project to widen three salmon-bearing streams under the freeway along a 6-mile stretch in Whatcom and Skagit counties.
• WSDOT said it is developing a process to distribute a limited number of pieces to interested members of the public, with details to come.
• The agency denied repeated requests from The Bellingham Herald to have reporters document the rock’s destruction with photos and video.
• Blasted out of Chuckanut sandstone when I-5 was built in 1966, the 8-foot boulder was first painted in 1969 with “Sealth ‘70” and went on to display memorials, marriage proposals, sports messages and graffiti for nearly six decades.

The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The full story in the link at top was reported, written and edited entirely by journalists.