Interstate 59 (I-59): Route, States, Bridges and Crash Record

How long is I-59?

Wikipedia and Interstate Guide agree on 445.23 miles from Slidell to the I-24 interchange. The FHWA Route Log lists 421.24, which is 23.99 miles less. Nearly all of the difference comes from the 23.60 miles near Meridian where I-59 and I-20 share a road in Mississippi: the Route Log books that piece to I-20 and gives I-59 only 148.29 Mississippi miles.

Alabama works the other way. Its I-59 row, 239.91 miles, already includes the shared road from the state line to Birmingham, and I-20 keeps only the miles east of the split. Alabama is the longest state on the route by either count; Wikipedia puts it at 241.36 miles. Georgia has 20.98 Route Log miles and Louisiana 12.06. The crash rates on this page add the 23.60 shared Mississippi miles back, so Mississippi is rated over 171.89 miles.

Where I-59 starts and ends

The southern end is a partial cloverleaf with I-10 and I-12 on the northeast corner of Slidell, in St. Tammany Parish. The northern end is an unnumbered three-wye interchange with I-24 near Wildwood, in Dade County, Georgia.

Northbound, I-59 leaves Louisiana over the West Pearl and Pearl rivers, with about six miles of the trip on Honey Island Swamp. In Mississippi it passes Picayune, Poplarville, Hattiesburg, Ellisville and Laurel, then meets I-20 at exit 149 just west of Meridian. The pair cross into Alabama together and go through Tuscaloosa to Birmingham, where they part east of downtown near the airport. I-59 then continues past Gadsden and Fort Payne into Georgia, where exit 11 at Trenton leads to the state welcome center. Georgia has named its whole segment the Korean War Veterans Memorial Highway, and US 11 parallels I-59 from one end to the other.

Interstate junctions along I-59

Read south to north, the list opens with I-12 and I-10, which both meet I-59 at the Slidell interchange. I-20 is listed more than once because of the long overlap, which begins west of Meridian and ends east of downtown Birmingham. Inside that shared stretch, I-59 and I-20 cross I-65 at the Birmingham interchange known as Malfunction Junction. The last entry is I-24 in Georgia. That makes five other main Interstates in all. Wikipedia also lists a future junction with I-85 near Cuba, Alabama, which has not been built.

Fatal crashes on I-59

From 2020 through 2024, 205 fatal crashes on the I-59 main line killed 228 people, about 46 a year. Deaths rose from 40 in 2020 to 55 in 2021 and 58 in 2022, then dropped to 38 in 2023 and 37 in 2024. Over the full route that works out to 10.3 deaths per 100 miles a year. The Interstate network average is 9.5, and I-59's rate ranks 18th highest of the 56 routes long enough to rank.

Alabama had 148 deaths and the highest state rate, 12.3, counted over all 239.91 Alabama miles, shared I-20 pavement included. Jefferson County, Alabama, had 64 deaths, the most of any county on the route, with Tuscaloosa County next at 32 and Etowah County at 17. Mississippi's 72 deaths gave it a rate of 8.4, and its worst counties were Lamar with 16 and Pearl River with 15. Georgia had 3 deaths and a rate of 2.9. Louisiana had 5 on its 12.06 miles, too short a stretch to rate.

Counties with the most I-59 crash deaths

Bridges on I-59

The 2025 National Bridge Inventory counts 395 bridges carrying I-59's main line: 100 in Good condition, 293 Fair and 2 Poor, about half of 1 percent. Both Poor bridges are in Alabama, which has 218 of the total. Mississippi has 145 and Louisiana and Georgia have 16 each, with none rated Poor. Half of the bridges were built in 1965 or earlier.

At Laurel, Mississippi, a 1961 S-curve posted at 40 mph gave way to a six-lane elevated viaduct about 1,980 feet long; work began in June 2006 and wrapped up in September 2009. In Birmingham, a four-year project replaced roadways that Interstate Guide dates to 1971, carrying I-59 and I-20 between I-65 and US 31/280, and the new bridges opened after a dedication on January 17, 2020.

Tolls on I-59

There are no toll roads, toll bridges or priced lanes on I-59 in FHWA's inventory dated January 1, 2023. A web search for toll or express lane plans turned up only ALDOT widening and rebuild projects, so driving all four states from Slidell to the I-24 junction costs nothing in tolls.

I-59 auxiliary routes

The Route Log numbers three spurs and loops off I-59, all in Alabama. I-459 is the longest at 33.76 miles, a belt line around the Birmingham area that the federal table lists as serving Bessemer, Bluff Park and Homewood. I-759 runs 4.87 miles into Gadsden, and I-359 is a 2.8-mile spur north toward downtown Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama.

Building I-59 and rebuilding it

I-59 has been part of the Interstate plan since August 14, 1957. In Louisiana, work on the Pearl River crossing began in 1958, replacing US 11's crossing at St. Rose. Mississippi opened its first sections in 1963, from the Louisiana line to Picayune and from Hattiesburg to Laurel, and everything south of the I-20 overlap was done by 1969. Interstate Guide dates the completion of the North Georgia section to 1971.

At 4 p.m. on August 27, 2005, as people fled Hurricane Katrina, I-59's southbound lanes began carrying northbound traffic for 21 miles, from the Louisiana line to Poplarville. Wikipedia's I-59 in Mississippi article calls it the first use of the route's contraflow plan.

By December 2025 ALDOT had awarded $239.2 million in I-59 reconstruction contracts since 2020, mostly in northeast Alabama, because the concrete underneath had deteriorated. The sixth, a $47.5 million rebuild of about 16 miles of southbound lanes from the Georgia line to just north of the US 11 overpass in Fort Payne, got under way in spring 2026 and is due by February 2029. Closer to Birmingham, ALDOT has been widening about four miles of I-59 from I-459 (exit 137) through Chalkville Mountain Road (exit 141) to six lanes since October 2024. The $70.4 million job had its southbound lanes done by November 2025 and was due to finish in December 2026.

I-59 traffic and road conditions

Wrecks, traffic shifts on the northeast Alabama rebuild and storm closures on I-59 change by the hour. The state traveler sites below, from Louisiana up to Georgia, post them as they happen.

I-59 questions