The New River Tunnel: Florida's First
Near Fort Lauderdale, Florida
If you drive United States Highway One through downtown Fort Lauderdale and dip suddenly beneath the surface, you are passing through something that was once a marvel and remains a rarity. This is the tunnel under the New River, and when it opened on the ninth of December, nineteen sixty, it was the only public tunnel operating anywhere in the state of Florida. A place famous for its bridges had, until then, never built an underwater crossing.
The tunnel carries the highway beneath both the New River and Las Olas Boulevard, replacing an old drawbridge that had snarled traffic every time a boat needed to pass. It runs about eight hundred sixty four feet long as a pair of concrete boxes, and it was designed by the New York engineering firm of Singstad and Baillie, specialists in undersea tunnels. Its builders boasted that it was fully waterproof and solid enough to double as a hurricane shelter.
In nineteen eighty six the crossing was renamed the Henry E. Kinney Tunnel, honoring the Miami Herald bureau chief who had championed its construction. Every day thousands of drivers slip under the river without a thought for the boats gliding overhead, riding through a piece of engineering history.
