Huey P. Long Bridge

Until 1940, the Mississippi separated Baton Rouge from West Baton Rouge the way rivers once separated nations — by ferry, by patience, by the assumption that the west bank was somewhere else. The Huey P. Long Bridge, opened in August of that year at a cost of $8.4 million, was the first highway crossing at the capital, a cantilever truss spanning 5,879 feet that carried US-190 and a single rail line over water that had been a boundary since French explorers found a red pole marking Houma and Bayagoula hunting grounds in 1699. Local tradition holds that Huey Long championed the bridge before his assassination in 1935, five years before it opened under the names of Long and his successor, Governor Oscar K. Allen. What the bridge accomplished was civic: it made the west bank parishes part of the capital's daily geography. Four lanes carry roughly 26,000 vehicles a day. It was the only Mississippi River crossing in Baton Rouge until the Horace Wilkinson Bridge opened in 1968. The bridge was repainted orange in the mid-1960s to match dust from the Kaiser Aluminum plant, then restored to its original light gray between 2014 and 2016. Locals say the Port Allen side offers the best vantage at sunset — the view west over a river that no longer divides.