Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

The bridge had a ferry for a predecessor. Bernard de Marigny, who founded Mandeville, ran boats across the lake into the mid-1930s. A 1920s scheme would have strung bridges between artificial islands paid for by selling home sites. The modern causeway came from Ernest Loëb Jr.'s 1948 idea and a legislature that created a commission to build it. The original span cost $46 million. On June 16, 1964, barges tore a gap in the bridge and a bus plunged into the lake, killing six people.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fontainebleau State Park — 4.6 mi
  Lakeshore park on the Northshore where Tchefuncte potters, Acolapissa and Choctaw lived, and where 153 people were enslaved at Marigny's sugar and brick plantation by 1840; the mill ruin still stands.

More markers nearby

• Dew Drop Social and Benevolent Hall — 2.0 mi
• Battle of Lake Pontchartrain — 2.3 mi
• Pottery Hill — 2.7 mi
• Native Peoples — 3.7 mi