Anyone who had to wait three days for the snow to melt on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway this week so they could get to New Orleans without a two hour detour around the lake needs to read this article from seventy years ago.
It was written by Bert Hyde, then editor of the St. Tammany Farmer newspaper, about his very first trip on the causeway back in 1955, which was even before it was finished. Click on the image to make it larger.
Thrill of a Lifetime Awaits Those To Travel Causeway
By Bert Hyde St. Tammany Farmer newspaper Oct. 21, 1955
I experienced one of the great thrills of a lifetime this past Tuesday afternoon- I took a 60 mile per hour ride over the 4.7 completed miles of the 24.5 mile long Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.
The thrill I experienced will be the thrill every man. woman and child shall probably experience when they too are able to travel out over unpredictable Pontchartrain around next Christmas, 1956, or before, when the world's longest vehicular bridge is scheduled for completion or thereafter.
My first impulse on moving out over the restless waters was that feeling of height. You can feel it in your upper abdomen. It's the sort of feeling one gets on looking over the rail of a tall building. The deck of the bridge is 16 feet about the level of the water; near enough to cause the water to appear threatening but far enough down and away to make you slump to the safety of the feet above the level of the water over the restless waters is that upholstery beneath you.
Glancing back for a moment you realize that you are losing that solid feeling' of the beaches that had curved away from you at the bridge's end like strung open arms. Instinctively you will move closer to the one in the seat beside you as you look ahead of you and see this smooth 28 foot wide concrete highway appear to be narrowing in the ever increasing expanse of endless water and the mile- a-minute speed of your vehicle.
Momentarily that queer feeling of fear begins to creep over you and you become more cognizant of that spot in your stomach. But you look out across the choppy waters toward the afternoon sun and the feeling of fear is momentarily overcome as you are fascinated by the dancing figures where sunlight plays on the ebbs of the patterned waves. A strong and chilling wind blows hard against your face.
Your mind wanders and you think of yourself standing on the bow of a great, rolling ship. You can almost feel the spray of the salt against your eyelids. Your emotions are playing tricks on you. You will turn your eyes now to the great bridge ahead of you. The bridge appears to be slumping just before it rises. You turn your eyes quickly to the opposite side of the bridge and the blue-green waters that roll gently away from you. Quickly you look back at the great bridge.
There is a rise in the bridge ahead of you but the slump has disappeared. Undoubtedly it had never been there. The rise caused your eyes to trick you. This first rise, some nine feet higher was purposely placed there by the engineers—you know that—to serve the dual purpose of breaking the monotony of the flat, endless, snow-white ribbon of concrete and to allow all but the largest of lake craft to pass beneath t h e bridge.
The gap is 75 feet wide now but it will be bridged with steel you are reminded by General Joseph Twitty who is your chauffeur in this your first motor trip over the causeway. General Twitty is resident engineer for Palmer and Baker, the engineering firm that designed the bridge. He pulled our little Jeep panel truck to a halt a score or more feet back from the gap opening between that section of bridge we were able to travel and the continuing mile or so on the other side of the gap.
"This is as far as we can go," he says. "This steel section of the bridge here at the first rise will not be completed until late in November. Then," he said, "we will be able to ride nearer a n d nearer New Orleans and Jefferson Parish as Louisiana Bridge Company pushes this masterpiece to completion."
General Twitty continues to talk but you do not hear him. Something is impelling you to get outside the vehicle and your feet on something solid again. You step from the vehicle and onto the now seemingly, narrow 28-foot strip of bridge. You think first of that feeling of safety you had come to accept inside the sheltering vehicle. The gale-like breeze here, almost 5 miles out from the shores at Lewisburg and Mandeville, pushes hard against you and you spread your feet seamanlike to steady yourself against the pressure — a pressure that is urging you toward the opposite side of that bridge.
"Pretty strong wind," the General says. "On a hot, summer Sunday afternoon there'll probably be hundred and hundreds of persons who'll drive across here just to cool off."
You edge yourself slowly, precariously toward the 26 inch rise at the edge of the bridge — that rise of cement that will be a part of the railing and abutment against persons driving or walking over the side of the bridge. "The present 30-inch thick reinforced concrete railing will be topped with a 12-inch high molded aluminum rail," the general quickly advises.
A quick glance down at the water satisfies you and you move back toward your waiting vehicle which had been turned around while you were not noticing and is now headed toward the inviting trees on the Mandeville shoreline.
The Jeep starts moving. T h e friendly shoreline reaches out to greet you. The trees behind the shoreline appear more stately than you had ever noticed them before. The drive back is slower but eventually you reach the shore and you look back at the great expanse of water that rolls restlessly behind you and you look again at that concrete that cuts such a straight line out and across the glimmering waters. You think of the thousands upon thousands of persons who will thrill as you have to that great engineering masterpiece ....
You'll think of the other reactions by other travelers over that great Causeway in the years to come — some wonderful reactions, some perhaps not so wonderful. But you know there will be reactions. Just you wait and see.
