Huey P Long Bridge

Story

The Huey P. Long Bridge, located in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, is a cantilevered steel through truss bridge that carries a two-track railroad line over the Mississippi River at mile 106.1 with three lanes of US 90 on each side of the central tracks.Opened in December 1935, the bridge was named for the late Governor Huey P. Long, who had been assassinated on September 8 of that year. The bridge was the first Mississippi River span built in Louisiana and the 29th along the length of the river. It is several kilometers upriver from the city of New Orleans. The East Bank entrance is at Elmwood, Louisiana and the West Bank at Bridge City. It was designed by Polish-American engineer Ralph Modjeski.On June 16, 2013, a $1.2 billion widening project by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development was completed and opened to motorists. The bridge now consists of three 3.3-meter (11-foot) lanes in each direction, with inside and outside shoulders. Prior to the expansion, there were two 2.7-meter (9-foot) lanes in each direction with no shoulders.in 2014, a writer in The New Yorker described the bridge as "a structure so vaulting and high that it seems to extend from one white, towering Gulf Coast cloud to the next."