Movable Bridges - Popps Ferry Bridge

As we continued east along Mississippi's coastline into Biloxi's Back Bay we came to the Popps Ferry Bridge.

It seems like bridges along the Gulf Coast are in a constant state of disrepair. In this photo the bridge is being put back together after Hurricane Katrina came through (in August 2005). I was reviewing my trip on Google Earth and found a photo of the bridge being repaired again after being hit by a tugboat pulling eight barges in 2009. The bridge tender opened the double-leaf bascule spans for the tugboat, but the operator must have had trouble with the current because he knocked out a bridge span instead. If it's not hurricanes, or errant vessels, its oil spills for the ill-fated residents of Biloxi's Back Bay.

The Popps Ferry Bridge has long and short precast I girder approaches and a 180 ft wide channel opening. The bridge was originally built in 1979 but its been rebuilt several times.

I'm afraid we are going to see a lot more damaged movable bridges before we get out of the Gulf. We estimated there was over $2 billion in bridge damage from Hurricane Katrina and many of these bridges have movable spans.

Movable Bridges - Popps Ferry Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.