VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — It's easy just to enjoy the ride today, but crossing the Chesapeake Bay wasn't always as simple as a 20-minute drive.
13News Now dug up footage from around 1955 of SS Pocahontas, a two-steam engine ferry that hauled people from Little Creek to the Eastern Shore.
That was 10 years before the modern marvel known as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. It changed everything in 1964 - shore to shore, the 17 miles of bridge and tunnel now give us a quick ride to the Eastern Shore.
Since its opening, more than 130 million vehicles have used it, and the $450 million investment also made those once majestic ferries obsolete.
From the early 1930s to the mid-1950s, a private corporation controlled the ferries.
Each vessel would haul 50 to 60 cars at a time, and it would take about an hour and a half to get you across. That was with perfect conditions on the water.
The much shorter drive across is getting even better.
New construction on a second tunnel closer to the Virginia Beach side started in 2017, but the project to bring two additional lanes for southbound traffic was supposed to be completed in 2022.
However, issues with the granite boulders originally used to build the structure pushed the project back five years.
The project’s main contractors are using tunnel boring machines, but progress has been slowed down by those boulders. The boulders help to form four artificial islands that anchor the portals of the bridge tunnel’s original two original tubes.
According to the Eastern Shore Post, additional year-long delays came as the contractor had to reapply for the federal marine life permit and was unable to complete concrete walls for the receiving and launching pit for the tunnel boring machine.
As it stands now, don’t expect the new tunnel project to wrap up until 2027.