Belle Chasse Tunnel

The Belle Chasse Tunnel was built starting in March 1954 to accommodate the new branch of the Intracoastal Canal. After nearly two years of construction, the $2,436,000 structure opened in February 1956 with the Canal beginning operations later that year. The politicians in Plaquemines Parish chose to construct a tunnel as opposed to a drawbridge as to enable continuous flow of traffic. According to engineers and various 1956 issues of the Plaquemines Gazette, the tunnel was the first fully automatic underwater tunnel in the world as it did not require any operating personnel. The tunnel had ventilation machinery that automatically change the tunnel's air every two minutes with automatic generators taking over if the machinery fails. Judge Leander Perez enabled the tunnel's construction by passing a constitutional amendment through the Plaquemines Parish Police Jury. He sold bonds towards construction with the US Corps of Engineers paying the remainder of the construction fees. When the tunnel opened, it was the first underwater tunnel in Louisiana. Shortly after, two new tunnels were built in the state: the Harvey Tunnel which once carried traffic from the Westbank Expressway and the Houma Tunnel. The tunnel was the primary means of carrying traffic to and from Belle Chasse and westbank Plaquemines Parish. Since its opening, hazardous cargo is prohibited from travellin

Tunnel data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).