I spend a lot of time doing historical research for my novels. Sometimes the research includes visiting a location or finding an old photograph. At other times the details of a particular day are important. For instance, the current chapter of my WIP is a trip from Tampa to St. Petersburg. Florida was a little different in the 1920s than it is in the 2020s. The Gandy Bridge was new and charged a quarter to each car that crossed the bay. At that time the six-mile-long Gandy was the longest bridge in the world. To put it simply, travel across Tampa Bay was much more time-consuming than it is today. The new bridge cut the driving time between the two cities in half and added an amazing view of Tampa Bay.
The Gandy Bridge was the first, but the Davis Causeway (now the Cortney Campbell Causeway) was in the planning stages. Davis Construction Company, wouldn't start construction until 1927. David (DP) Davis, was behind the project. His current building efforts included dredging the bay to turn two small islands into three, which could support a planned community complete with golf courses, hotels, apartments, a business district, and private houses. Environmental impact wasn't a consideration during the Florida Land Boom. Builders at the time only worried about how much money they could make.
The Howard Frankland Bridge was a dream that many thought could not be built. It would be several decades before technological improvements in construction equipment allowed the dream to become reality. Perhaps they should have kept dreaming a while longer. The bridge opened in 1960 and was soon nicknamed the "Howard Frankenstein Bridge" by the locals because of the many accidents that backed up traffic for hours.
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