All the information I have on bridges in St. Tammany Parish has been consolidated in this book, with many color photos of the more prominent bridges. It ranges from the one lane back country bridges to the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway and Interstate 10 "Frank Davis "Naturally N'Awlins" Memorial Bridge."
With its many waterways criss-crossing the landscape, St. Tammany's story is the story of its bridges, connecting communities and serving commerce.
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From the forward of the book:
The waterways of St. Tammany Parish are everywhere: rivers, bayous, canals and even a large saltwater lake. They play host to swamp boat tours, jet skis, houseboats, party barges, gigantic missile components from Michoud to Stennis, luxury yachts and hundreds of flatboats equipped with outboard motors and fishing gear, plus all the pirogues, canoes and kayaks.
Over the years, as the footpaths between settlements gradually became wagon trails, then roads, then highways and then interstate highways, the importance of building good bridges over all those waterways became a priority.
St. Tammany has the largest number of marshes, waterways, ponds, and lakes of any parish in the state of Louisiana, and while that is good for recreation, it brings to the art of bridge-building a number of challenges. In many cases, these challenges required innovative engineering and construction methods.
The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway utilized new assembly-line methods of concrete span construction, Slidell originally started as a manufacturing operation for creosoting railroad bridge pilings and crossties, and the parish experimented with bridging rural one-lane crossings using retired railroad flatcars with the wheels taken off.
Every bridge, whether a one-lane span over a country backroad or a six-lane interstate over one of the world’s largest tidal passes, has at its heart the aim to provide a way for people to go from where they are to where they want to be.
In many ways, the history of St. Tammany is the history of its bridges. Here are the stories of a few of them.
