James River Bridge - History: Longest Bridge in The World Over Water

History: Longest Bridge in The World Over Water

The privately-owned James River Bridge Corporation was chartered by the General Assembly to build a system of bridges across the James River, Chuckatuck Creek, and Nansemond River, as well as approach roads. On the Newport News end, the bridge simply ended at an intersection with State Route 39/U.S. Route 60 (Virginia Avenue, now Warwick Boulevard). However, a large system of approach roads, including two smaller toll bridges, was built on the Isle of Wight County side. Traffic coming off the bridge reached a Y intersection at Bartlett, at which it could head west over a private approach road past Carrollton to State Route 10 at Benns Church, or head southeast into Nansemond County. The first of the two smaller bridges was the Crittenden Bridge over Chuckatuck Creek (the county line) at Crittenden, and the second, after passing the road to Hobson and Chuckatuck (now State Route 628), was the Nansemond River Bridge over the Nansemond River. The end of the private approach road was at the current intersection of Bennetts Pasture Road (State Route 627) and Lee Farm Lane (State Route 701), where one could go south to State Route 10 (now State Route 337) at Driver. So the James River Bridge System served not only traffic crossing the James River, but also traffic along State Route 10; the 1928 Chuckatuck-Driver Kings Highway Bridge (now State Route 125) competed with the James River Bridge System for this traffic.

The $5.2 million James River Bridge was opened on November 17, 1928 by the press of a button in Washington, D.C., where U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, sitting in the Oval Office of the White House, sent an electric signal to lower into place the upraised lift span over the James River channel. Drivers could now choose to cross Hampton Roads on a fixed bridge rather than one of many ferries. The new bridge was narrow by current standards, with a 20-foot (6.1 m) roadway from curb to curb, and railings much less substantial than found on modern structures. The main lift span was 300 feet (90 m) long; the other two bridges included 110-foot (34 m) bascule spans. When completed, it was the longest bridge in the world over water.

From 1928 to 1931, State Route 503, a state highway from Portsmouth via Churchland and Belleville to the private approach road south of the Nansemond River, was added to the state highway system. U.S. Route 17 was moved onto this alignment (from one of the ferries) by 1932, and still uses it today. State Route 258, now part of U.S. Route 258, was extended over the Benns Church approach and bridge by late 1943 to reach the new Mercury Boulevard. Thus all approaches had numbers at the time of the state takeover in 1949. In 1951, State Route 32 was extended from Suffolk over the bridge to end in Newport News, completely overlapped with other routes, "to facilitate the routing of traffic over the James River Bridge System, between points north of Newport News and south of Suffolk".