The Guinness World Records officially recognizes Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain Causeway as the world’s longest bridge across water. When the Louisiana Bridge Company built it in 1956, the causeway connected the north and south of New Orleans directly and originally stretched over Lake Pontchartrain for almost 24 miles.
An eight-mile stretch of land disappears from view for drivers crossing the causeway, causing a rare phenomena that occasionally results in seasickness and police involvement. Notably, an airplane that ran out of fuel over the lake once made a safe landing on the bridge. Babies have also been born on the causeway when their mothers were unable to get to the hospital in time.
A second two-lane span was added to the causeway in 1969, running parallel to the first. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is now officially recognized as the longest bridge over water in the world, even though the second span was only marginally longer—roughly 50 feet—than the first.
With the construction of the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in China in 2011, a fresh competitor claim surfaced that threatened the causeway’s record. Disagreement, however, developed when aggregate buildings that were not «over water,” including land bridges and underwater tunnels, were included in Guinness’ measurement requirements. Guinness created two new categories to address this: the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge became the “longest bridge over water (aggregate)” and the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway became the “longest bridge over water (continuous).”
The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway continues to be the longest continually overwater bridge in the world, despite the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge’s distinction being surpassed by the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. The causeway, which has tolls collected on the north side for southbound traffic, remains a spectacular technical marvel, with its southern end in Metairie and its northern terminus in Mandeville. At the 16.0-mile marker, a bascule drawbridge allows water traffic to pass under the bridge.
