Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, or the Causeway, consists of two parallel bridges crossing Lake Pontchartrain in southern Louisiana, United States. The longer of the two bridges is long. Since 1969 it was listed by Guinness World Records as the longest bridge over water in the world; in 2011 in response to the opening of the longer Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in China, Guinness created two categories for bridges over water: continuous and aggregate lengths over water. Lake Pontchartrain Causeway then became the longest bridge over water (continuous), Guinness World Records. Last accessed July 2011., Guinness World Records. Last accessed July 2011.

The bridges are supported by 9,500 concrete pilings. The two bridges feature bascule spans over the navigation channel south of the north shore. The southern terminus of the Causeway is in Metairie, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. The northern terminus is at Mandeville, Louisiana.

History

The idea of a bridge spanning Lake Pontchartrain dates back to the early 19th Century and Bernard de Marigny, the founder of Mandeville. He started a ferry service that continued to operate into the mid 1930s. In the 1920s, a proposal called for the creation of artificial islands that would then be linked by a series of bridges. The financing for this plan...
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