My 1931 garage sale find this morning.

A 1931 booklet with this front cover and back cover...





That's the first Pensacola Bay Bridge when it was built in 1931 (actually called the Thomas H Johnson Bridge at the time named for an earlier mayor of Pensacola).
Simultaneous with the construction of the first bay bridge was the first bridge from Gulf Breeze to the beach AND the Pensacola Beach Casino. That's an artist's rendering of what the Casino looked like when it opened in 1931.
Here's an actual 1931 photo of the Casino from the parking lot side...

I have said this before at the PNJ, but is worth repeating. My mother was a teenager when that bridge was built and it was a toll bridge. She told me that the toll was a dollar. In the depression, that was a lot of money!

Cars with lifeguards at P. Beach got across free, so she would try to give a lifeguard a lift to the beach.

You guys are right to wax nostalgic and revisit the "good" old days of hard living and few government programs because we are headed back there very fast. $6.00 gasoline and toll roads everywhere soon enough.

TEOTWAWKI wrote:You guys are right to wax nostalgic and revisit the "good" old days of hard living and few government programs because we are headed back there very fast. $6.00 gasoline and toll roads everywhere soon enough.

I hate toll roads. The one going over to Pensacola Beach was instituted to pay for the bridge... at least that was their intent at first. I think we have paid the Bob Sikes Bridge off several times. Taxes, once implemented, seem to become immortal... even when they are supposed to be finite.

The only toll road I use routinely is the one that goes off I-75 south of Ocala and runs through Orlando.

http://www.examiner.com/article/toll-roads-may-be-texas-near-future


, the big land grab, the foreign-owned companies in control of highways throughout Texas, tolls of 75 cents per mile,

FLORIDA:

http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/news/article.html/content/news/articles/bn9/2012/7/5/more_toll_roads_in_f.html


TALLAHASSEE --

Drivers travelling Florida's rural areas may find themselves taking more toll roads in the future.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, Gov. Rick Scott's administration is giving new energy to a plan to develop roads in more remote areas of Florida.

The 'future corridors' proposal was originally created during Jeb Bush's time in the governor's office. The program was shelved by former governor Charlie Crist.

The 'future corridors' plan researches the long-term feasibility for more roads across the state's less-accessible areas.

The network would include at least four toll roads.