BUILD IT AND THEY WILL GO

When it opened in 1956, the Causeway may have been the world’s longest bridge, but it was a bridge to nowhere. It spanned Lake Pontchartrain to connect New Orleans to the mostly rural, sparsely populated St. Tammany Parish. But by 1969, a second span was needed. With western St. Tammany booming at the end of the century, thanks in part to the Causeway, the bridge is groaning under the pressure of the added trafflc. Also in the 1950s, the Greater New Orleans Bridge connected New Orleans with its West Bank and spurred development there. A parallel span was eventually needed there as well, and the bridge was renamed the Crescent City Connection.