The Laredo International Bridge 1 is one of four road bridges that cross the Rio Grande to connect the cities of Laredo, USA and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

The 320 m long bridge is officially known as the Gateway to the Americas International Bridge (Wikipedia) and, as we can see from this satellite shot, the sheer volume of cars waiting to get into the states really help it to live up to its name – nearly a million cars cross this bridge each year, albeit slowly.

There’s a webcam on the American side that shows a typical American street scene, while the webcam on the Mexican side seems to always show a scene very similar to what we can see in the satellite shot.

In the webcams you might also spot one of the 4 million pedestrians who cross the bridge on foot each year.

Laredo International Bridge 2, or officially the Juárez-Lincoln International Bridge (Wikipedia), was built in 1976 to alleviate traffic on the first bridge, and is only open to buses and non-commercial traffic.

Slightly shorter at 307 m it has six lanes, four or which head north into the US. All four northbound lanes appear to be continually gridlocked, which is hardly surprising when you hear that over 4 million non-commercial vehicles cross here every year.

Google’s Street View car never got close enough to see the bridge itself, but we can see the front of the border control building from a distance.

Next up is the Laredo International Bridge 3, or Colombia-Solidarity International Bridge (Wikipedia), which has eight lanes this time and of all the bridges so far carries the most commercial traffic – around 270,000 vehicles each year.

Our final road bridge is the Laredo International Bridge 4, or World Trade International Bridge (Wikipedia), which despite also having eight lanes, is only open to commercial vehicles – a LOT of them. In the past year this bridge has been crossed by nearly 1.2 million commercial vehicles.

It’s not only road bridges that connect the two countries here either – there’s also the Laredo International Railway Bridge, or Texas-Mexican Railway International Bridge (Wikipedia) which connects the Texas Mexican Railway in the US with Mexico’s Kansas City Railway.

Ironically, unlike the road bridges, the Google Street View car got close enough to the railway bridge for a photo opportunity.

As if that wasn’t enough bridges, plans are already underway for the construction of yet another road bridge and two more railway bridges.

For the full breakdown of statistical data about these bridges, see this traffic distribution chart at cityoflaredo.com.

Congratulations to Fraser, who finally got a suggestion published.

If you’ve been wondering why half of the Internet had gone quiet, then (like us) you might not have realised that today is the 4th of July, and that means it’s America’s Independence Day.

The holiday marks the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 – which is today held at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C..

Buy what does the National archive store in those white boxes on the roof?

All over America people are celebrating Independence Day with fireworks, parades, barbecues and public displays of patriotism: such as this guy dressed like Uncle Sam in Austin, Texas.

Not wanting to be left out of the party, the Street View Icon Guy has dressed up for the occasion too!

Read the full history of the holiday on Wikipedia.

It’s been just over a month since Google added 12 new US cities to Street View, and yesterday we got new imagery in another 13 cities, and interestingly, a US national park! Here’s some of the highlights, including links straight there:

• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Anchorage, Alaska
• Austin, Texas
• Cleveland, Ohio
• Fairbanks, Alaska
• Little Rock, Arkansas
• Madison, Wisconsin
• Nashville, Tennessee
• Rockford, Illinois
• Richmond, Virginia
• Spokane, Washington
• St. Petersburg, Florida
• Tampa, Florida

Finally, Google have also added imagery for the few roads that run through Yosemite National Park, California, which enables us to see some pretty stunning scenery.

Here’s El Capitan, a 910 metre vertical rock formation that’s a popular challenge for rock climbers, and some spectacular Giant Redwoods living up to their name!

Read the full story at the Google Lat Long Blog, read more about El Capitan and Giant Redwoods at Wikipedia.

The Google Lat Long blog has announced that Google has just added 12 more US cities to their street view coverage, bringing their total coverage to, um.. lots. The new cities added are as follows:

• Albany and Schenectady, NY
• Boise, ID
• Juneau, AK
• Kansas City, MO
• Manchester, NH
• Milwaukee, WI
• Research Triangle Park (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill), NC
• San Antonio, TX
• Salt Lake City, UT

And presumably just for today (because today is Valentine’s Day in case you’d forgotten), it seems the little Street View guy is standing on a little love heart.

Aww, puke.

As so often seems to be the way with claims of “World’s Largest”, there’s a certain amount of jostling for the top slot – regardless of who should rightfully be in it.

Most often described as the World’s Largest Cross is the one in Effingham, Illinois. Unfortunately it isn’t covered on Google Maps, but Microsoft have a view of the area.¹ Bizarrely, on the day this image was taken the cross appears to have donned some sort of invisibility cloak, but take my word for it, at 60.3 m high it just ain’t that big.

Over in Groom, Texas, they also have a very large cross, and we can actually see it this time. Dubbed “The second largest cross in the western hemisphere“, it used to be the largest in the western hemisphere (until they built the Effingham cross to be 2.4 m taller). Anyway, it’s a dubious claim-to-fame either way.

Never fear though, as there’s a truly spectacular large cross to see near Madrid, Spain. The Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen) contains one of the world’s largest basilicas, which was hewn out of a granite ridge by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco – to honour those who fell during the Spanish Civil War.² Absolutely towering above the basilica is the tallest memorial cross in the world, a 152.4 metre high stone cross that took 18 years to complete.³

Not to be outdone, in Nazereth plans are underway to build the true “World’s largest cross” – but at a proposed 60 metres they’re not even going to come close.

More on Effingham, Groom and the Valle de los Caídos at Wikipedia, and in our own original post on the Valle de los Caídos (the imagery of it has been updated since then).

Thanks to Jan & michael woodruff