Short answer: I couldn’t find any official ranking of Florida bridges by steepness, so there’s no official winner.
My bet is that most people asking mean the Sunshine Skyway over Tampa Bay.
It has the highest clearance of any long bridge in the state, with roughly 175 to 181 feet of clearance under it.
For a tall climb packed into a shorter bridge, look at Jacksonville, which has three of the next four.
I rewrote this post in October 2026.
The old version said a Coast Guard cutter “crashed the bridge” in 1980.
That’s two different disasters mashed into one, and the real story is below.
It also spent nine sections on bridges in other states, from Maryland to California.
Florida’s tallest bridge climbs
So without a grade ranking, I use height as the stand-in.
A bridge that has to clear a tall ship has to climb to get there, and you feel every foot of it.
Here are the highest clearances among Florida’s road bridges that are at least half a mile long, from the state DOT’s bridge data:
| Bridge | City or water | Clearance | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunshine Skyway | Tampa Bay | 175 ft | 21,875 ft |
| Dames Point Bridge | Jacksonville, St. Johns River | 174 ft | 10,645 ft |
| Mathews Bridge | Jacksonville, St. Johns River | 148 ft | 7,376 ft |
| Hart Bridge | Jacksonville, St. Johns River | 141 ft | 3,844 ft |
| William M. Powell Bridge | Biscayne Bay (Rickenbacker Causeway) | 78 ft | 3,698 ft |
Now look at the gap after the Hart.
Florida’s next-tallest long bridge clears 78 feet, and most top out around 65.
So the big climbs are basically the Skyway and Jacksonville’s river crossings.
(The Skyway’s own page puts its clearance at 180 to 181 feet.
The table uses one source for all five, so the numbers line up.)
Here’s my rough rule, and it’s only that: the same height in a shorter bridge means a steeper ramp.
By that logic the Hart, with 141 feet of clearance in under three-quarters of a mile, may well feel steeper than the Skyway, which spreads its climb over four miles.
Nobody publishes the grades side by side, so treat that as a guess.
Why bridges look steeper than they are
Photos lie.
And you’ve probably seen the one that started a lot of these searches.
Japan’s Eshima Ohashi went viral as a bridge that looks like a wall of road, but that’s a telephoto lens squashing the distance.
Its real grade is 6.1% on one side and 5.1% on the other.
For comparison, the original 1954 Skyway rose at a 5% grade.
Steep enough that you’d notice.
Not a roller coaster.
What really happened to the old Skyway
Two separate disasters hit near the old bridge in 1980.
The old version of this page blended them, which honestly does a disservice to both.
On January 28, the Coast Guard cutter Blackthorn collided with the tanker Capricorn near the bridge and sank.
Twenty-three crew members died, the worst peacetime disaster in Coast Guard history.
That was the first one.
The second one is the collapse people remember.
On May 9, the freighter Summit Venture hit a support pier during a sudden squall, and more than 1,200 feet of the southbound span fell.
Six cars, a truck and a Greyhound bus went off the edge.
The bus and the cars fell about 150 feet into the bay, and 35 people died.
The bridge you drive today opened in 1987, with a main span 50% wider than the old one.
Its piers sit behind massive concrete “dolphins” and a quarter-mile line of barriers to keep ships off them.
What was left of the old bridge became two long fishing piers.
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If you’re driving it
You’ll pay to cross.
It’s a toll bridge.
Last I checked, a two-axle car paid $1.16 with SunPass or $1.75 with the state’s toll-by-plate billing.
If you’ve booked a rental car, ask how it handles tolls before you hit the ramp (our SunPass or E-PASS guide walks through it).
At night, honestly, it’s worth the detour.
Since 2019, LED lights on its columns and spans cycle through animated light routines.
For more on this bridge, see how tall the Skyway is and how long it takes to cross.
If it’s length you’re after, the answer is down in the Keys: Florida’s longest bridge.
Everything else is in our Florida bridges guide.
Related read: Things I Wish I Knew Before Going to Japan — Instant PDF + Kindle download. Secure checkout by Stripe
