The Fred Hartman Bridge

It is the thing you see first and the thing you remember. Two diamond-shaped towers, a fan of stay cables on each, eight lanes of Highway 146 lifted about 175 feet over the Houston Ship Channel so the tankers can pass underneath. It opened in 1995 and replaced the Baytown Tunnel, which had run under the channel since the 1950s and had to go when the channel needed to be deeper than the tunnel was.

The bridge is named for a newspaper publisher — Fred Hartman ran the Baytown Sun for decades and pushed for the crossing — which tells you something about what this town thinks matters.

Driving it. There's no pedestrian path and no pullout, so the view is the drive. Westbound at dusk is the one: the plants light up on your right, the bay opens on your left, and for about forty seconds you are higher than anything in Harris County that isn't a building. Southbound at night the deck lights make a runway. Trucks are common and the crosswind on the high span is real; hold the wheel.

Seeing it. The best free view is from the Baytown Nature Center, where the bridge sits across the water like a postcard and the herons ignore it. Bayland Park's shoreline works too, and the boat ramps there are the photographers' spot at golden hour. From the Lynchburg Ferry, mid-channel, you get the bridge and the San Jacinto Monument in one frame. Drone shots of the bridge are all over the internet; almost none of them are licensed, including — until we replace it — the one at the top of this site.

Closures. It closes for high wind, for hurricanes, and occasionally for an incident on the deck. When it does, the Lynchburg Ferry is the alternative for cars — and it's a long one, because everyone in the county has the same idea. Closures post to the Living Here page as they happen, pulled from the county and TxDOT.

The numbers. For the people who want them: opened September 1995; about 2.6 miles including approaches; a main span around 1,250 feet; towers roughly 440 feet; the longest cable-stayed bridge in Texas when it opened. If those numbers are off, the sources below are where we got them and we'd like to hear it.

The tunnel it replaced. The Baytown Tunnel opened in 1953, two lanes under the channel, and was one of the few road tunnels in Texas. It was cut apart and removed after the bridge opened so the channel could be dredged deeper. There is nothing to see of it now except the name on old maps and in the memory of anyone who drove it.