T O W E R S O N T H E WAT E R
Enlightened, Lakeside
THE HISTORIES OF THE LIGHTHOUSES ON LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN Story by Kristy Christiansen • Photos by Paul Christiansen
I
n the early 1800s, Lake Pontchartrain was a bustle of maritime traffic carrying goods and passengers to canals leading into the heart of New Orleans and to resort towns on the Northshore. Three historic lighthouses—New Canal, Milneburg, and Tchefuncte hRiver—guided ships safely across the Lake and still stand today as a testament to Lake Pontchartain’s heyday of commerce and travel.
New Canal Lighthouse
Once used to guide sailors across Lake Pontchartrain to the entrance of the former New Basin Canal, the current New Canal Lighthouse, built in 2013, is the fourth version to grace these shores. The story of lighting the Canal begins in the 1700s, when the French Creoles were using Bayou St. John to sail from Lake Pontchartrain into downtown New Orleans. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Americans from other colonies began pouring into the area, wanting their own route to the city. “The French Creoles managed Bayou St. John and charged the Americans more,” said Kate Tannian, Museum Visitor Services Manager at the New Canal Lighthouse. “They also played tricks on them. Ships would get pulled down the canal by horses. They would let the Americans in at the end of the day and then send all their workers home.” To address the problem, the New Orleans Canal and Banking Company hired Irish and German immigrants to dig the New Basin Canal between 1832 and 1838. The first lighthouse—an octagonal, cypress tower with a fixed light on top—went up at the mouth of the canal in 1839. Built on pilings in Lake Pontchartrain, the structure was short-lived. “They basically built a thin, tall tower on top of a sponge, and over time, it sunk and fell,” explained Tannian. In 1855, a second, square lighthouse with a wider footprint and iron pilings was constructed. The one-story building worked well until 1880 when the Southern Yacht Club built a two-story building next door and blocked out part of the guiding light. The second lighthouse was sold at auction in 1890 and taken away, making way for a new two-story, wedding-cake-style structure. All three of these versions of the lighthouse originally stood offshore, until the city drained the marsh and created the Lakefront Park in the 1930s. 40
A U G 2 2 // C O U N T R Y R O A D S M A G . C O M
The New Canal Lighthouse is notable for its large number of female light keepers, possibly the most of any in the nation. One late nineteenth, early twentieth century keeper, Margaret Norvell, saw a Navy plane crash in the lake and saved the pilot’s life by rowing out to rescue him. On another occasion, she saw a pleasure cruise catch fire and rallied local fishermen to help save the more than two hundred passengers. In the 1940s and ‘50s, the New Basin Canal was filled in, and the Coast Guard took over the lighthouse between the early 1960s and 2001. The Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation (LPBF), now known as the Pontchartrain Conservancy, had plans to lease the lighthouse when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Although damaged, the lighthouse still stood until a November winter storm dropped the steel cupola and shattered it. In 2007, LPBF took the lighthouse apart piece by piece and put it in storage, embarking on a multi-year effort to raise money to rebuild it in 2013. “We used fifty percent of the original materials. We’re lucky we had the blueprints, so we built it almost exactly how it was before, but we raised it nineteen feet and moved the bell tower,” said Tannian. Today, the Pontchartrain Conservancy runs an education center out of the lighthouse, including a geological history of Southeast Louisiana, the ecology of Lake Pontchartrain, and a history of the lighthouse. scienceforourcoast.org.
Milneburg Lighthouse
“Milneburg was an example of the saying, ‘If they build it, they will come,’” said Tannian, referring to the lakeside resort town built in the early 1830s by Scottish-born Alexander Milne. To escape the oppressive summer heat, New Orleans residents could ride the steam train, called the “Smoky Mary” from the French Quarter to Milneburg, a twenty minute journey, and stay at the resort or board a steamer at Port Pontchartrain headed for the Northshore.
The
