one across Berwick Bay at Morgan City, Louisiana.
After an appropriate prayer by Rev. James Sells. Miss Gloria Colie, “the small flaxenhaired daughter of Captain and Mrs. Herman H. Colle” cut the ribbon across the span. Then “Master Quin Gautier, little son of Mr. and Mrs. Hermes Gautier, acting as escort for the little maiden” threw down the bottle of fake champagne to christen the structure. But it did not break. He threw it down three times and it did not break, the soft pavement acting as a cushion. The fourth time the bottle was “thrown against ironwork” and the East Pascagoula River Toll Bridge officially opened.
On June 3, 1930, the I22nc* anniversary of the birth of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the last great bridge in the Mississippi Gulf Coast Old Spanish Trail link was dedicated in the initial act of the 1930 United Confederate Veterans Reunion. Dubbed War Memorial Bridge in honor of the Jackson and Harrison County men who died in World War I, the concrete and steel structure spanned the Bay of Biloxi from Ocean Springs to Biloxi. The two-mile-long structure with a steel draw span and a 20-foot-wide roadway changed the route of the Old Spanish Trail. This bridge supplanted the D’Iberville Bridge and thus cut off six miles of travel up and over Biloxi Bay. The new bridgehead reached Biloxi at Howard Avenue. The new route of Highway 90 ran the length of Howard Avenue to Porter Avenue thence south to the beach.
In the following quarter century the route of the Old Spanish Trail continued to be refined and improved. In June 1930 the steel free highway bridge at the Rigolets went into service. That bridge together with the steel free span erected over Chef Menteur Pass the previous September, allowed motorists to avoid the Watson-Williams Toll Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain. The Louisiana-Mississippi short-cut link from the Rigolets to Pearlington opened in late 1935, cutting 22 miles off the former distance from the Gulf Coast to New Orleans.
By August 31, 1942, the East Pascagoula River Bridge was the last toll bridge on the whole length of the Old Spanish Trail Highway from St. Augustine to San Diego. The following day the tollbooth at the bridge closed and traffic flowed freely.
In the World War II era Harrison County began four-laning the front beach drive. On December 11, 1950, Mississippi Stale Highway Commissioner John D. Smith broke ground on the formerly inviolate stretch between 25^ Avenue and 30^ Avenue in Gulfport. By December 1951, a four-lane highway ran where the Great Southern Hotel once stood. The consequent rerouting of Highway 90 to the beach relieved the traffic pressure on downtown Gulfport.
Also in December 1951, the 26-mile-long sand beach, being pumped across the length of Harrison County to protect the seawall, was nearly complete. Jackson County was preparing to let contracts to change the whole route of the Old Spanish Trail, four-lane it, and build new bridges. And Hancock County had let the contract for a new four-lane concrete highway bridge to replace the wooden structure erected in 1928, sections of which had burned on several occasions.
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