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.
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