Gandy Bridge in Tampa, Florida

The Gandy Bridge carries US 92 over Old Tampa Bay between Tampa and St. Petersburg, and its 1924 original was the first bridge to connect Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, according to the University of South Florida.

FDOT's project pages describe today's crossing as the US 92 (Gandy Boulevard) bridge over Old Tampa Bay, part of Gandy Boulevard, SR 600 and US 92, and they treat the eastbound bridge as its own structure for maintenance. On the Tampa side the bridge feeds Gandy Boulevard, which runs east to Dale Mabry Highway, the eastern limit of a current FDOT technology project.

The name comes from George Gandy, the land developer who built and first owned the original bridge, USF says. A State Archives of Florida postcard record notes simply that the Gandy Bridge opened in 1924. Later bay crossings grew up around it: Hillsborough County records that Howard Frankland was long an advocate of a span between the Gandy Bridge and the Courtney Campbell Causeway, and the Howard Frankland Bridge opened in 1960.

George Gandy financed the first bridge through stock offerings, and it took $3 million and 1,500 workers to build, according to records in the USF Special Collections Gandy box.

USF describes Gandy as a developer who specialized in transportation. He had built trolley lines in Philadelphia before moving to the Tampa Bay area, where he served as president of the St. Petersburg and Gulf Electric Railway Co. and then turned to the bridge. The finished structure was 2.5 miles long and 24 feet wide, built of steel and concrete, and was the lengthiest automobile toll bridge in the world at the time.

The point was distance. USF professor emeritus Gary Mormino, a co-founder of the Florida Studies program, told the university that Tampa and St. Petersburg were around 50 miles apart before the bridge, an all-day trip on poor roads. According to the information in USF Special Collections, the bridge cut the trip to 19 miles and 45 minutes.

The Gandy Bridge opened in 1924 as a private toll bridge, a State Archives of Florida record and USF agree, and its opening drew a crowd of officials.

Mormino told USF that 16 governors attended the opening, calling it a huge event. The program handed out at the official opening, kept in the Gandy box, celebrated the bridge for linking together the two greatest cities of the Florida West Coast and argued that the time saved by the traffic expected to cross it was something to marvel at. Hotels and other businesses in both counties advertised in it to residents who might never have made the trip before.

The box also holds a newspaper clipping headlined St. Petersburg and Tampa United, and Andy Huse, curator for Florida Studies at the USF Tampa Library, credits the bridge with starting what is now known as the community of Tampa Bay. Exact opening-day details such as the date and the toll rates are reported in secondary histories, but the official records checked for this page give only the year, so the page does too.

The original bridge was taken over by the government, stopped charging tolls, and was later dismantled and replaced by a bridge of the same name, according to USF.

State records show the replacement under way in the 1950s. A State Road Department photograph held by the State Archives of Florida, titled Construction of Gandy Bridge, Hillsborough County, Florida, was taken on February 16, 1956. Only one piece of the 1924 structure survives, USF says: one of the four entrance towers that marked the Pinellas and Hillsborough approaches, now on display at Heritage Village, Pinellas County's history museum.

The years of later widenings between Tampa and St. Petersburg and the history of the trail that used an older span are told in news features and road histories, but the official records checked here do not give those dates, so they are not listed. The crossing in service today has separate directional bridges; FDOT's work orders for the eastbound span are described below.

Since 2021, drivers coming off the Gandy Bridge into Tampa can stay on Gandy Boulevard or take the elevated Selmon West Extension, a 1.9-mile toll bridge, according to the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority.

THEA says construction began in December 2017 to connect the south end of the Gandy Bridge to Brandon with no stoplight in between, by linking it to the reworked Lee Roy Selmon Expressway entrance ramp at Dale Mabry Highway. The $230 million elevated toll lane was fully funded by toll revenue and bonds and was built so drivers could stay on Gandy Boulevard for local destinations or use the extension for regional pass-through trips.

The authority credits the extension with 40% greater capacity on Gandy Boulevard for neighborhood traffic and corridor businesses, and with shorter signal waits at Westshore Boulevard, Manhattan Boulevard, Lois Avenue and Dale Mabry Highway. Most elevated interstates rise about 15 feet off the ground, THEA notes, and the extension rises twice that high, which keeps businesses along Gandy Boulevard more visible. It also calls the extension a dedicated hurricane evacuation route for almost 1.3 million local and regional families.

At the April 19, 2021 ribbon-cutting, THEA presented the City of Tampa with a $2 million check to help rebuild city parks on the north and south side of Gandy Boulevard that had served as construction staging areas.

FDOT has two Gandy projects under construction in October 2026, a $2.9 million repair of the eastbound bridge and a $4.8 million technology upgrade along Gandy Boulevard, according to its Tampa Bay project pages.

The eastbound repairs take place underneath the bridge and are not expected to affect traffic on Gandy Boulevard; any lane closures would run from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and work affecting navigable water is coordinated with the U.S. Coast Guard. The technology project is laying a trunk fiber optic line, installing permanent generators and replacing a dynamic message sign, and it has posted eastbound lane closures on the Gandy Bridge between Hillsborough and Pinellas counties from Monday, October 19 through Friday, October 23, nights from 6:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. The project information line for both is 813-975-6204.

The Pinellas resurfacing, still in design, would also modify medians to make room for a third westbound lane from San Fernando Drive, on the St. Petersburg side of the bridge used by westbound drivers leaving Tampa.

The papers of the original bridge are kept in the George Gandy box at USF Special Collections on the Tampa campus, which can be viewed by appointment, according to USF.

USF lists old photos, news clippings, financial documents, land and stockholder warrants, mortgages, receipts and articles of agreement in the box, along with the opening program and sheet music for a song celebrating the bridge. The State Archives of Florida adds postcards and the 1956 State Road Department construction photograph to the public record, and the surviving entrance tower stands at Heritage Village in Pinellas County.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against USF's November 2024 report on its Gandy Bridge holdings, two State Archives of Florida records, the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority's Selmon West Extension page, four FDOT Tampa Bay project pages for US 92 and Hillsborough County's Howard Frankland profile.