Who could have ever thought,in their wildest imagination, that a hurricane in New Orleans could cost Alaska two bridges? Alaska tarred and feathered.

• Position: From the Publisher

Bridges to nowhere have a very predictable habit of ending up being bridges to somewhere. We have examples in Alaska: Kodiak's Near Island Bridge once thought to be a planner's pipe dream, when finally completed, opened up land for new industrial enterprises. In the 1950s, yours truly many times joined a boat party rowing across Iliuliuk Bay that later was spanned by the Bridge to the Other Side, from Dutch Harbor at Unalaska to connect to-what? The airport on Amakanak Island! (Attention Ketchikan and Gravina Island.) Truth be told, islands often figure prominently in bridge building: Lake Washington Floating Bridge and Mercer Island; Golden Gate Bridge and Yerba Buena Island, to name two that are near to us. Other bridges to nowhere might include the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that took off from very rural Tacoma outskirts and landed in Gig Harbor when the population tallied about 700. Today, a second bridge is under construction and the original (after first blowing down) now carries 90,000 automobiles daily! Then take the Astoria-Megler Bridge. It spans the mouth...