Orleans Avenue Canal

The Orleans Canal is a drainage canal in New Orleans, Louisiana. The canal, along with the 17th Street Canal and the London Avenue Canal, form the New Orleans Outfall Canals. The current version of the canal is about 2 km long, running along the up-river side of City Park, through the Lakeview and Lakeshore neighborhood, and into Lake Pontchartrain. It is part of the system used to pump rain water out of the streets of the city into the Lake. The Canal has also been known as the Orleans Avenue Canal, the Orleans Outfall Canal, the Orleans Tail Race, and early on, the Girod Canal,

The earliest version of the Orleans Canal did not include any of the current route. It was a drainage ditch dug alongside of Orleans Avenue in the 1830s, running from the Tremé neighborhood into Bayou St. John. It was part of a city drainage plan by state engineer George T. Dunbar. The "Bienville Drainage Machine" was constructed, basically a large paddle-wheel powered by a steam engine, at the corner of Hagen and Bienville Streets, which pushed the current of the Orleans Canal out towards the lake, perhaps the first of what would become many mechanical pumps for removing water from city streets. Dunbar's plans included many other improvements to the city's drainage, but the Panic of 1837 largely halted further implementation plans for decades.

The canal was expanded during the developments and civic improvements in New Orleans in the 1870s. In 1871 drainage improvements rerouted and extended the canal, changing its terminus from the Bayou to the lake. The Canal Street, City Park, and Lake Railroad Company was formed in 1873, and the line was complete and running by 1877. The railway ran from the developed part of the city which still hugged the Mississippi River, with a stop at City Park (which at the time extended only 1 block back from Metairie Road—modern City Park Avenue), then taking a bend at the Lakefront to terminate at Spanish Fort Amusement Park. Much of its route ran alongside the straight line of the canal, which was dug deeper, providing fill for the railway right-of-way through the low swampy area running from Metairie Ridge to the lake. While some 19th-century city maps show a grid of streets in this area, in reality these streets were not extended into this area, and it remained a swamp with little development until the mid-20th century. At the time, the main intention of the canal was to remove water from the developed area on the lake side of the machine, not from the swampy ground along closer to the lake along most of the canal's length.

...
Wikipedia