Mile 10.0 - The I-10 (New) Bridge

The I-10 (New) Bridge

Louisiana is the land of massive continuous steel truss bridges. The local geography where the land is very close to sea level combined with ocean going ships traveling the Mississippi River forces the bridges to rise up over 150 feet in the air, then cross the wide river navigation channel. For decades, the only solution to this problem was building big metal monster bridges. Of the large truss bridges over the lower Mississippi, the Interstate Highway I-10 Horace Wilkinson Bridge is the biggest of the big. It rises 175 feet above the water, making it the highest of any Mississippi River bridge, at least measured over the navigation channel (side spans of the Smith Avenue High Bridge in Saint Paul are taller, but its center span is 10 feet lower than the I-10 structure). The Wilkinson Bridge is 14,150 feet long overall, which is more than 2-1/2 miles. The truss superstructure is 4,550 feet long, and features a 1,235-foot clear channel span. The traffic deck carries six lanes of freeway traffic, seeing an average of 90,000 vehicles per day, which makes it the busiest bridge on the Lower Mississippi. The I-10 bridge appears to drivers to have a very steep incline leading to the truss spans. Many local people refer to this bridge as the ‘New Bridge’, to distinguish the structure from the older US-190 bridge located 4 miles to the north. The bridge was officially named by the Louisiana state legislature in Act 206 in 1968. The act states, “These gentlemen served diligently, contributing greatly to the betterment of the state” when speaking of the three generations of Wilkinsons who served a total of 54 years in that body. There is some dispute if the state of Louisiana legislature had the authority to give an official name to a federally funded bridge. As a result, the official bridge name is not posted on Interstate I-10. The official name ‘Horace Wilkinson Bridge’ is not widely known. In fact, representatives have unwittingly introduced bills to the legislature on several occasions proposing to give the bridge an official name not realizing that the bridge had already been named. (John Weeks)