Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, USA

The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is also known as The Causeway, is a fixed link composed of two parallel bridges crossing Lake Pontchartrain in southeastern Louisiana, United States. In 1955, the Louisiana Bridge Company was created to undertake the construction project. It took just 14 months to build the first two-lane span of the causeway. The longer of the two bridges is 23.83 miles (38.35 km) long. The bridges are supported by 9,500 concrete pilings. The two bridges feature a bascule, which spans the navigation channel 8 miles (13 km) south of the north shore.

The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is so long that motorists lose sight of land for an eight-mile stretch, and drivers have been known to freeze out of some kinds of false seaborne fear, at which point the police have escorted them off the bridge. Babies have been born on the causeway when their mothers failed to make it to the hospital on the other side. And an airplane once ran out of gas over the lake, eventually landing safely on the bridge.

A decade after the completion of the first bridge, daily traffic had surpassed 5,300 vehicles. Plans were made to expand the causeway by building a second two-lane span parallel to the original. The second bridge was opened in 1969, separated from the original by about 84 feet. The second span was only about 50 feet longer than the original, but it was enough to finally catch the attention of the Guinness Book of World Records (first published in 1955). The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway was officially recognized as the longest bridge over water in the world, a record it held unchallenged until 2011.