1934

Talk about vertigo. Remember when driving across the Huey P. Long Bridge in Jefferson Parish was as frightening to a flat-lander New Orleanian as a stroll along the rim of the Grand Canyon? Those 9-foot, shoulderless “cantilevered” lanes skirted along the very edge of the bridge. With a hesitant side glance out the car’s side window, you were sure the cosmic forces of gravity would pull you through those seemingly weak railings for a long fall into the dark river below. 

Nevertheless, the Huey P. Long Bridge, constructed in the 1930s, was an engineering wonder then and now. It was the first automobile and railroad bridge to cross the Mississippi in the New Orleans region. Before that, trains and cars were transported across the river on steam-driven ferries that wasted a great deal of time.

Building a bridge across the Mississippi had been a dream for Southern Pacific Railroad throughout the late 19th century. With the creation of the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad in the early 1900s, a bridge became necessary to service the city’s port and economy. In 1916, Louisiana voters approved a state constitutional amendment, giving New Orleans exclusive authority to build a bridge across the river. The engineering firm of Modjeski, Masters and Chase drew up a design in 1925 and the state issued a permit in 1926. Construction, however, didn’t begin until December1932 and not until the Public Belt received $13 million in bonds. To pay off those bonds, the Public Belt Commission planned to charge Southern Pacific an annual rental fee plus impose a small toll on automobile traffic. 

The project moved quickly after that, finally opening on Dec. 16, 1935, with a massive celebration beginning with a crossing by an 1860s “primitive puff locomotive” with 1,200 railroad and political dignitaries aboard, a fly-over by squadrons of Navy and Army planes, a ribbon-cutting by Rose Long, wife of the late Huey P. Long (Long had been assassinated three months earlier), and scores of speeches. In one speech reported the next day in the Times-Picayune, A.D. Danziger, representing the state highway commission, said the bridge should be named for Long who made the project possible with $7 million in state highway bonds.

“That day,” said Danziger, “when an Association of Commerce Committee obtained a pledge of assistance from Senator Long, then governor, coupled with the provision that the highway bridge be toll-free, marked the major step in translating the dream of many years, and putting it into a way of becoming an actuality. I express the earnest wish that there be acquienscence in every quarter to the naming of this structure, the Huey P. Long bridge.”  

The Times-Picayune went on to give a few construction details. The center span was 790 feet long and the roadway stood 135 feet above the river’s highwater level. It contained over 400 tons of concrete and 60 tons of steel. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, “the dual-track railroad portion was the longest, highest railroad bridge in the world at the time.” 

The Huey P. Long bridge’s appearance changed little over the decades, not until it underwent a $1.2 billion expansion between April 2006 and June 2013.