The Unsettling Reasons This River Bridge Is Louisiana's Most Dangerous

There are more than 600,000 bridges in the United States and the most dramatic can often inspire terror as much as wonder. Just take the magnificent Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland: Some people are so afraid to drive on it that there are services to drive your car across it. There are many articles online with titles like "America's most dangerous bridges," where peril is often conflated with scariness; just because a bridge looks horrifying doesn't necessarily make it a dangerous part of a US roadway. Thousands of other bridges in the United States, however, are objectively unsafe due to poor conditions. In this latter category comes the Calcasieu River Bridge in Louisiana, not just one of the most dangerous in the state, but also the entire country.

Spanning the Calcasieu River between Lake Charles and Westlake, the bridge is a local landmark and one of the tallest structures in the area. Built to provide clearance for ships serving heavy industry farther upstream, it reaches a height of 135 feet at its center. This makes the bridge notoriously steep, especially for large trucks. Although it looks sturdy enough from a distance, its rusting girders hint at another story: the bridge was originally built to last for 50 years and carry around 37,000 vehicles per day. That was more than 70 years ago in 1952 and it now strains under 90,000 crossings daily. A replacement has been in discussion since the 1980s, but decades later, it is still carrying the burden. For how long?

The National Bridge Inventory (NBI) gives Calcasieu River Bridge a sufficiency rating of 6.6 out of 100, making it one of 1,545 bridges in Louisiana deemed structurally deficient by the Department of Transportation. On top of that, it only scored 3 out of 9 in a structural evaluation, meeting the bare minimum standard for a bridge to stay open. The NBI's reports suggest that the poor condition of the bridge may result in local failure, but total failure is also a possibility. The I-35W Mississippi River bridge held the same score when it collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145, although an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that a design flaw was the most likely cause.

Aside from the risk of catastrophic collapse, Calcasieu River Bridge has seen its share of fatal accidents. The worst occurred in 1981 when an expansion joint pierced the fuel tank of an 18-wheel truck. The resulting spill caused a huge 26-vehicle crash, killing three people and injuring 18 more. More recently, a man died in January 2024 jumping from the bridge after several vehicles were involved in a pile-up in icy conditions on the bridge. Five months later, another motorist potentially averted a repeat of the 1981 incident when she spotted a problem with an expansion joint. Traffic was rerouted while the issue was resolved.

The poor condition of the Calcasieu River Bridge is part of a larger nationwide problem. Apart from the aforementioned 1,545 Louisiana bridges that are also in concering conditions, 1 in 13 crossings in the United States are considered deficient, with an average age of 42 years old. Plans for a new Calcasieu River Bridge have been in the works for for many years, passed over due to the sheer cost and logistical challenges of rerouting large volumes of traffic while the current bridge is replaced. 

Despite these alarming factors, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) has passed the bridge as safe and patched it with repairs in 2012. To add insult to injury, the decorative crossed pistols added as a decorative feature, when the bridge was first constructed are often damaged or stolen, compromising the safety of the guardrails. The good news is that a replacement bridge was greenlit in January 2024, a project that will cost an estimated $1.2 million. Unfortunately, motorists won't be able to use it anytime soon — the new, fully up-to-code structure will take around seven years to complete.

In the meantime, there is an alternative route if you are on a road trip through Louisiana and feel wary about crossing the Calcasieu River Ridge. A little further downstream is the more modern Israel LaFleur Bridge, built in 1962. The bad news is, it is also known for its scariness.