Fairfax

Fairfax is a ghost town in Pierce County, Washington, situated along the Carbon River roughly six miles south of Carbonado on SR 165. Its existence grew out of coal mining, which drove settlement of the area but proved short-lived — once the deposits were no longer economically worth working after World War I, the town's reason for being disappeared with them.

Before 1921, reaching Fairfax required either a railroad connection or a pack train, since no road bridge served the site. That changed with the completion of the O'Farrell Bridge that year, a span rising 240 feet above the river, but by then the community was already fading. Today Fairfax is a quiet historical footnote in a scenic river corridor, and visitors come more for the atmosphere and the dramatic bridge than for any surviving townsite infrastructure.