What is now the Lafitte Greenway — the linear park that runs through New Orleans from the French Quarter to Mid-City — was once a canal dug by Francisco Luis Hector, Barón de Carondelet in 1794.

Francisco Luis Hector de Carondelet ordered the construction of the Carondelet Canal.

As the Spanish governor of Louisiana and West Florida, Carondelet ordered the construction of the 1.5 mile-long canal, called the Carondelet Canal, as a shipping corridor connecting the city to Bayou St. John, which then provided a channel to Lake Pontchartrain. 

“From its origin, dirt walkways extended from Bayou St. John along the canal’s route to the Vieux Carré, which were later developed into a pedestrian promenade referred to as the Carondelet Walk,” the Cultural Landscape Foundation states.

According to 64 Parishes, Carondelet urged Spain to make New Orleans a free port. “His efforts to strengthen the colony were dashed, however, when Spain acquiesced to U.S. territorial demands in the Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795), also known as Pinckney’s Treaty.”

Carondelet was born in Cambrai, France, on July 29, 1747. He joined the Spanish military in 1762. He served in the Caribbean during the American Revolution and in the Spanish siege of Pensacola in 1781. He became the Louisiana governor in 1791.

“Though he struggled valiantly with the many difficulties he met there … the problems presented by the Native Americans and by U.S. encroachment proved to be too much for him,” Britannica states.

Carondelet was reassigned in 1797 and became governor-general of Quito, located near what is now Ecuador. He died there on Dec.10, 1807.

The canal, which would later be called the Old Basin Canal, was vital to the city’s shipping industry. However, it often filled with sewage and caused “flooding because it allowed water from the lake to enter the city during storms,” according to New Orleans Historical. 

The New Basin Canal, dug in the 1830s, eventually became the main shipping channel. The Carondelet Canal would be closed and filled in the 1920s and 1930s. The Lafitte Greenway opened along the old canal’s footprint in 2015.

For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.

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Tammy C. Barney is an award-winning columnist who spent most of her career at two major newspapers, The Times-Picayune and The Orlando Sentinel. She served as a bureau chief, assistant city editor, TV...