DAVID PLOWDEN WROTE an engaging and beautifully illustrated article on American bridges (“The Bridges I Love,” Winter 2003), saying a lot in a small space, but in common with other surveys of bridge design where the text emphasizes the tallest, fastest, and longest, no mention was made of the very long railroad bridge across Lake Pontchartrain, in Louisiana. It is the ultimate stepchild of bridge history. I suppose this is because it is so very low and thus not photogenic. But it was the longest bridge in the world when it opened, on November 1, 1883, a 28-mile-long trestle incorporating two drawbridges. It was built of creosoted timbers and pilings by Fletcher, Wisenberg, and Company, of Cincinnati, for the New Orleans & Northeastern Railway (now part of the Norfolk Southern). By the 1890s earth embankments replaced much of the timber fabric, reducing the trestle to less than six miles. A concrete structure replaced the wooden trestle between 1983 and 1997.
John H. White, Jr.
OXFORD, OHIO
