The new Bay of St. Louis Bridge crossed the bay one-half mile north of the old wooden bridge which footed at Ulman Street in Bay St. Louis. Dedication ceremonies for the Coast’s first four-lane Highway 90 bridge took place on August 1, 1953. The toll on the bridge was 25 cents.
In Jackson County the roadbed for a new four-lane Highway 90 was placed on the north side of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad parallel to Old Highway 90 south of the tracks.
An overpass lofted the road over the tracks near the Ocean Springs front on Biloxi Bay. East of Pascagoula the highway department laid down a new single-lane roadbed to connect with the new Alabama four-lane road at the Alabama-Mississippi line. As to the Pascagoula estuarine delta crossing, the West Pascagoula Bridge and the East Pascagoula bridges were replaced by four-lane structures. The marsh embankment road between them was built up to ten feet above sea level and widened to four lanes.
The Texas Construction Company built over the West Pascagoula a level 1,800-foot concrete bridge with a steel plate girder span over the navigation channel. This span provided a navigation clearance of 90 feet horizontally and 12 feet vertically above mean tide usable by small craft. This was not a drawbridge.
The Texas Construction Company built over the East Pascagoula a 1,334 foot-long concrete structure rising to a double-leaf steel draw over the navigation channel. The bridge provided a horizontal clearance of 140 feel and a closed-draw clearance of 32 feet above mean tide. The loll on this bridge for automobiles was 25 cents. Trailer trucks paid one dollar.
On Friday afternoon, October 15, 1954, Jackson County hosted three separate ceremonies dedicating the $12 million transcounty highway and bridge project. At 2:30 p.m. Terry' Hague, four-year-old granddaughter of Jackson County Beat Three Supervisor George B.
Hague, cut the ribbon on the Mississippi-Alabama line. Simultaneously, Barbara Beibelkom, then current Ocean Springs Miss Hospitality, cut the ribbon at Ocean Springs. At 3:30 p.m., Mississippi Lieutenant Governor Caroll Gartin and State Highway Department Chairman John D. Smith spoke at the main ceremony which was held on the bridgehead of the West Pascagoula River Bridge in Gautier. State Senator Hermes Gautier, the former Jackson County Supervisor who had played a stellar role in the events leading up to the construction of the 1928 bridge, acted as master of ceremonies.
After the speeches, three-year-old Susan Ford, escorted by eight-year-old Warren Gautier, cut the ribbon joining the east and west ends of the project. Susan Ford’s mother was Gloria (Colle) Ford who had cut the ribbon opening the 1928 bridge. Warren Gautier’s father was Quin Gautier who had accompanied Gloria.
On May 9, 1962, authorities dedicated a new four-lane two-mile-long Biloxi-Ocean Springs bridge connecting Jackson and Harrison counties by spanning Biloxi Bay south of the 1928 War Memorial Bridge. This new bridge connected the 30-mile-long Harrison County four-lane boulevard completed May 21, 1954, (the first transcounty four-lane highway in Mississippi) to the four-lane highway on the Jackson County side. With the opening of this new Biloxi-Ocean Springs bridge, the route of Highway 90 through Biloxi dropped from
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