From the Bay to Biloxi, here’s the history of bridges that connect the MS Gulf Coast

It’s time to bridge the name-calling gap, don’t you think?

Is it the Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge? The Ocean Springs-Biloxi Bridge? The War Memorial Bridge? Or the Biloxi Bay Bridge?

The answer: All the above, depending on what side of the Mississippi Gulf Coast bridge you live on, or what date in history you refer to, or perhaps more realistically, your own personal and biased inclinations.

Officially and in the records, the 21st Century span that travels from the tips of eastern Biloxi to western Ocean Springs is the Biloxi Bay Bridge. After all, the bridge does cross Biloxi Bay, just as its fraternal twin sister span to the west crosses the Bay of St. Louis and is officially called the Bay St. Louis Bridge.

That bay bridge, too, has had its share of name debates, although folks at that end of the Coast tend to be more cohesive about the name. When this post-Hurricane Katrina version of the span opened in May 2007, the Mississippi Department of Transportation sent out VIP invitations to opening ceremonies of “St. Louis Bay Bridge.” Oops.

“It’s always been Bay St. Louis Bridge,” then-Mayor Eddie Favre declared. Historians agreed, noting that St. Louis is in Missouri. Of note, locals across the Coast have nicknamed it “the Bay Bridge” since the first span was built there 92 years ago.

The Bay Bridge straddles the quaint town of Bay St. Louis on the west, and on the east Henderson Point and Pass Christian. Those folks never put up a fuss about their name being included, so Bay St. Louis Bridge it remains in the hearts and minds of most.

Not so for its sister 32 miles away. Officials thought they’d put an end to that nearly century-old debate in 2007 when they dedicated the post-Katrina replacement span as Biloxi Bay Bridge. Grumble. Grumble. The community rivalry between Biloxi and Ocean Springs is no sleeping dog.

Written histories, news articles, maps, postcards and even Internet sources contribute fodder to the debate with conflicting names on both bay bridges.

For the Biloxi Bay one, deliberations remain active. This tidbit appeared several weeks ago in the Sun Herald’s Sound Off column:

“Before Katrina, I and everyone I know called the bridge that connects Biloxi and Ocean Springs the Ocean Springs bridge. When it was rebuilt after being destroyed by Katrina the media called it the Biloxi Bay Bridge. I still call it the Ocean Springs bridge,” the Sound Off submitter wrote in part, confirming his or her community rivalry by ending with a snide remark about Biloxi’s pronunciation.

Biloxians are likely tutting their tongues.

The two cities have long debated names as well as “firsts,” including where French explorers first landed in 1699 to create La Louisianne, the basis of many modern states. It doesn’t helped that the French designated both cities as “Biloxi.”

Another Sound Off concluded the next day: “Call [the bridge] whatever you want, just like we always did.” Plenty of other vintage Biloxi vs. OS quotes exists, but you get the picture.

After a good laugh at the absurdity of this rivalrous revival of name calling, I revisited previous bridge research. In my lifetime, three different spans have graced the water there, due to demands of progress and destruction of hurricanes.

Did you know, for example, that pieces of the original bridge that opened in 1930 are now part of a fishing reef. Or that, at its opening, it was named War Memorial Bridge and declared the longest memorial to World War I? Or that the bridge we use today is considered a design engineering feat.

Before we delve into the three bridges, let’s throw some word counts into the name debate. The marvels of computers allow “keyword” searches of old newspapers including this one. For example, if I typed “Joseph T. Jones” and “Gulfport” into the the search engine I’d get “hits” on hundreds of articles that mention the port city’s co-founder.

For this bridge history project, I searched the years from 1928 to 2008 beginning with 1928 when Coast taxpayers voted to build the first bridge to replace the bay ferries. I ended in 2008 because the post-Katrina span was going full force.

Searching for “Ocean Springs Biloxi Bridge” in that 80-year time frame, I found 407 hits, a.k.a. news articles with that exact name. For “Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge” I found 2,967 hits. Big difference.

I was curious about when “Biloxi Bay Bridge” first appeared, wondering if today’s official name was used before? Yup. A headline on May 3, 1930, declared, “Biloxi Bay Bridge Is Nearly Ready.”

1930 is when the span opened, so from the very beginning of inception the bay bridges were called all three names. Numerous references to all three exist, although at the first grand opening in 1930 the span was officially christened War Memorial Bridge.

That proved quite a day for Coast progress, but first a bit of perspective.

When the first automobile arrived here in 1900, vehicles used sandy roadways, sometimes paved with crushed oyster shells, and ferries carried them across waterways. Enter the “good road enthusiasts,” as they called themselves, who formed the Old Spanish Trail Highway Association in 1915.

They soon envisioned a transcontinental highway from St. Augustine, Florida, to San Diego, California. These road enthusiasts led to creation of U.S. 90 (or Front Beach as old timers called it), which lead to a seawall and some mighty fine automobile bridges.

What a great touristy promotional tool to call this modern highway The Old Spanish Trail, even though it really wasn’t. With the trail came bridges to quicken travel between Mobile and New Orleans and create beautiful Sunday drives.

Now, back to War Memorial Bridge, all 1 ½ miles of it. The 1930 price tag was $900,000, about $17.3 million today.

“Army and Navy airplanes roared overhead while the Gulf Coast fishing fleet paraded the bay waters as the Harrison and Jackson county bridge over the Bay of Biloxi was dedicated to the men and women of the counties who served in the world war,” this newspaper reported.

Veterans walked and the first automobiles rolled over the paved two-lane bridge. However, you’d need scuba gear to see the bridge’s steel and concrete, now part of the Katrina Fishing Reef south of Deer Island.

Interestingly, that 2005 hurricane did not force abandonment of the original Memorial Bridge.

By 1962, two lanes couldn’t handle the increasing traffic and a new bridge was ordered. Memorial’s draw span was removed to allow free-flowing boat traffic, and the two ends of the bridge were turned into popular fishing piers for both Biloxi and Ocean Springs.

The replacement 1.6-mile, $7 million ($61 million today) concrete span dedicated May 1962 was officially named Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge, but we know how well that went.

For 43 years, the changeling fishing piers and the four-lane bridge constructed just south of them served the Coast well, even if traffic stopped 1,000 times a month to open the span for ever-larger fishing trawlers.

Katrina solved that problem in 2005 by turning that bridge as well as the original Memorial piers into reef rubble.

Traffic-jammed, time-harried drivers quickly learned the importance of having bay bridges instead of circuitous land routes, and in record breaking time a third bridge was dedicated November 2007.

The beauty of the design-on-the-go construction of the $338 million, six-lane, high-rise Biloxi Bay Bridge remains a marvel to those who walk, jog, cycle or drive across its 1.6 miles, no matter what name they call it.

Kat Bergeron, a veteran feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Mississippi Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923.

Editor’s note: For what it’s worth, the Sun Herald’s local style guide insists on Biloxi Bay Bridge, “contrary to newsroom map.”

This story was originally published May 16, 2021 at 8:00 AM.