U.S.

America by Air: Precarious Pontchartrain

By Chris Bodenner
Editor’s Note: This article previously appeared in a different format as part of The Atlantic’s Notes section, retired in 2021.
Margaux Fisher

Have a good aerial photo to share? Please send our way. The latest from a reader:

Hi! I’m submitting an aerial photograph of the Twin Span Bridge, which stretches across Lake Pontchartrain, connecting New Orleans and the neighboring town of Slidell. I took this on my first (and only, so far) flying lesson a few months ago. We flew out of the New Orleans Lakefront Airport, which was built in the 1930s on top of a manmade peninsula overlooking the lake.

The bridge gets a mention in the piece Susannah Breslin wrote for us about her PTSD following Hurricane Katrina:

I drove across the eastbound span of the Twin Span Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, and parts of the westbound span of the bridge were simply gone. I drove an hour through a destroyed forest, and when I looked up in the sky, I tried to imagine a thing so big that it could destroy so much.