Lake Pontchartrain

This guide to the causeway crossing Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans opens with a trophy fight: Guinness credits a bridge in China with the longest span over water, while this nearly twenty-four-mile crossing claims the longest continuous stretch, with the far shore never coming into view. Behind that argument lies the story of how engineers solved the problem of building a bridge across open water in the nineteen fifties, using a concrete casting method nobody had tried before. You'll hear about the barges, the factory-line assembly, and the schedule the crews were racing against. Stand on the south shore and look for the moment the land disappears behind you.