New Basin Canal

The New Basin Canal, also known as the New Canal and the New Orleans Canal, was a shipping canal in New Orleans, Louisiana, from the 1830s through the 1940s.

The New Basin Canal was constructed by the New Orleans Canal and Banking Company, incorporated in 1831 with capital of 4 million US dollars. The intent was to build a shipping canal from Lake Pontchartrain through the swamp land to the booming uptown or "American" section of the city, to compete with the existing Carondelet Canal in the downtown Creole part of the city.

Work commenced the following year. Yellow fever ravaged workers in the swamp in back of town, and the loss of slaves was judged too expensive; so most of the work was done by Irish immigrant laborers. The Irish workers died in great numbers, but the Company had no trouble finding more men to take their place, as shiploads of poor Irishmen arrived in New Orleans. Many were willing to risk their lives in hazardous, back-breaking work for a chance to earn $1 a day. By 1838, after an expense of $1 million, the 60-foot (18 m) wide 3.17-mile (5.10 km) long canal was complete enough to be opened to small vessels drawing 6 feet (1.8 m), with $0.375 per ton charged for passage. Over the next decade the canal was enlarged to 12 feet (3.7 m) deep, 100 feet (30 m) wide, and with shell roads alongside.

No official count was kept of the deaths of the immigrant workers; estimates ranging from 4,000 to 30,000 have been published, with most historical best guesses falling in the 8,000 to 20,000 dead range. Many were buried without a grave marker in the levee and roadway-fill beside the canal.

The canal originally joined with Lake Pontchartrain around the present day intersection of Robert E. Lee and West End Boulevards, but jetties were added on both sides extending it farther into the lake. The New Canal Lighthouse or more commonly New Basin Canal Lighthouse was built on the far end of one of the jetties at the entrance to the canal. Starting from the entrance of the canal, it headed south through the swamp, cut through the highground of Metairie Ridge, through the mid-city lowlands, into the city, ended in a turning basin at Rampart Street and Howard Avenue in what is now the New Orleans Central Business District.

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