History of the Lafitte Greenway

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The Carondelet Canal

300 years ago, the land through which the Lafitte Greenway now passes was a cypress swamp that marked the frontier of the small, French colonial town of New Orleans. The only settled areas here were found along Bayou St. John and the naturally elevated ridge of today’s Bayou Road. The native peoples of the region had long used that route as a shortcut. It was the overland portage trail that connected the Mississippi River with Bayou St. John, Lake Pontchartrain, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. 

The French settlers founded New Orleans where that natural ridge meets the Mississippi River--a strategic connecting point for trade and transport between the greater river region and the Gulf of Mexico. Any person traveling to the city, or wishing to bring goods to sell in New Orleans from the Gulf Coast and beyond had to take that 2-mile muddy trek or brave the 100 final miles of the winding, muddy, and wild Mississippi River.

This changed in 1794. when the Spanish Governor of Louisiana, Don Francisco Luis Héctor, Baron de Carondelet, began constructing the Carondelet Canal. Over three years, 100 convicts and over 200 enslaved people dug this 15-foot wide canal, stretching from Bayou St. John down the course of today’s Greenway, ending at today's Basin Street. Indeed, Basin Street earned its name as the site of the canal’s turning basin for boats. The canal allowed small boats to travel to the edge of the French Quarter. 

Detail of a 1798 map of the Carondelet Canal connecting the city with Bayou St. John, courtesy of the Library of Congress

A visitor in 1820 described the Carondelet Canal full of commercial life, with 70 to 80 sailboats daily, bringing “cotton, tobacco, lumber, wood, lime, brick, tar, pitch, bark, sand, oysters, furs and peltries” from the lake and the Gulf Coast.

Developing Neighborhoods and Transportation Corridors

In addition to transportation and trade, from the beginning the Carondelet Canal served an important role for drainage and water management. The canal drew water from the wet and low-lying fringes of the city out to Bayou St. John and Lake Pontchartrain. The Carondelet Canal, along with other canals built in this era, transformed these back-a-town swamps into dry, habitable land. 

The neighborhood of Tremé developed due to the canal’s drainage improvements. By the 1840s it was turning into a vibrant neighborhood, where many free people of color built their homes -- initiating the area’s historic legacy as a center for Black culture, community, and activism. 

The canal, meanwhile, served as a focal point for the development of one of the area’s first park spaces. The Carondelet Walk ran along the edge of the canal, providing walkers with a beautiful passageway to stroll along the water. The nature path that today runs along the Lafitte Street side of the Greenway from Claiborne to Galvez is a modern homage to the historic Carondelet Walk.

Firewood stored in luggers at Old Basin Canal turning basin circa 1910, Globe Theater in rear, courtesy of the Library of Congress

By the mid-1800s, the canal increasingly faced competition from other canals and river-to-lake rail lines. However, the aging Carondelet Canal, now nicknamed the “Old Basin Canal,” helped sustain local industry, particularly in the area around the turning basin where vessels could arrive, dock, load, unload, and turn around to depart. Located where present-day Basin Street becomes Orleans Avenue, near today’s Armstrong Park, this bustling little port had around its flanks dozens of lumberyards, planing mills, charcoal depots, firewood yards, stables, warehouses, light industry, and food handlers, particularly those dealing with shellfish and finfish. Much of the economic activity associated with the Carondelet/Old Basin Canal in this era was built upon the institution of slavery.

1885 Sanborn map of Old Basin Canal turning basin, courtesy of Library of Congress

In the early 1900s, the New Orleans Terminal Company built a railroad line right along the edge of the canal on today’s Greenway, with a grand new terminal station at Basin Street. After years of disrepair, the Old Basin Canal became filthy and overgrown with plants. and was declared unusable in the 1920s. The City filled the canal in with the intention of, “removing the menace to health of the Old Basin canal….and converting it into a parkway or a sunken garden.”

Clogged channel of Old Basin Canal in 1921, at present-day 3300 Lafitte Street, courtesy of the Historic New Orleans Collection

Lafitte Greenway: Legacies of the Past

Soon the rail line would experience its own decline. The increasing importance of the car in the mid- 20th century spelled the end for the train that traveled down this very corridor. In 1955 the rail lines were rerouted to the new Union Passenger Terminal. This land, located in the heart of New Orleans, sat vacant.

Just over 50 years later, community members living along this abandoned corridor came together to form Friends of Lafitte Greenway with the vision to transform this strip into a vibrant and active Greenway to connect people to nature, their destinations, and each other.  Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, city leaders embraced this vision as part of creating a path toward a healthier, more sustainable city that would work with water. The collaboration of Friends of Lafitte Greenway, these city leaders, and the community led to the Greenway’s opening in 2015.

Aerial view of the Carondelet Corridor, now the Lafitte Greenway in 2018, courtesy of NORD

The Lafitte Greenway bike and walking trail is the modern iteration of a historic transportation corridor. From Basin Street to Norman C Francis Parkway, the trail follows the Carondelet Canal’s path to its turning basin (now filled) on Basin Street. Beyond Norman C Francis Parkway, the Greenway narrows as it follows the rail line’s route to its future endpoint at Canal Boulevard.

The Lafitte Greenway and Water

Today on the Greenway you can find a drainage canal and bioswales that also keep alive the water management legacy of this corridor. The St. Louis Canal, visible along the trail from Broad Street to Norman C Francis Parkway, is part of a system of 1,500 miles of underground drainage pipes, 200 miles of open and underground canals and 24 drainage pumping stations through which any water that falls on impervious surfaces in the city such as concrete or asphalt will travel in the journey to Lake Pontchartrain. 

This “gray infrastructure'' system has been working for over 100 years to move as much rainwater out of the city as fast as possible. However, traditional gray infrastructure alone is often no match for today’s storms. New Orleans is one of the country's rainiest cities, receiving over 60 inches of annual rainfall, and the intensity and regularity of major rain events continues to increase due to climate change.

Bioswale adjacent to the Lafitte Greenway Plaza, photo courtesy of Ian Mcnulty

The Greenway’s land is designed to catch and hold rainwater that falls in bioswales, which are low-lying trenches filled with trees and water-loving plants. This vegetation drinks up stormwater, helping them grow while reducing runoff. The bioswales’ soils absorb water, recharging the groundwater supply and preventing our spongy soils from shrinking or “subsiding.” Subsidence is often to blame for New Orleans’ broken pipes and potholed streets. Giving stormwater more safe and useful places to go, like the Greenway’s bioswales, helps prevent the city’s drainage system from being overwhelmed. “Green infrastructure” including the Greenway’s bioswales, helps reduce flooding in our neighborhoods.

The Greenway’s plants and bioswales also play an important role as a wildlife habitat. While we no longer have black bears roaming great cypress swamps, the native trees and plants on the Greenway provide food and shelter for birds and other wildlife with whom we share our city. Take a walk and look out to see what you might find. 

Do your part to keep the Greenway clean and healthy for the plants and animals that call it home. Pick up litter and help keep trash out of our waterways.

Want to learn more? 

Read Richard Campanella's essay on the full history of the Greenway

Explore our Walker’s Guide

Visit the trail today!