In 1970 an article appeared in the St. Tammany Farmer telling about one person's recollections of excursion boats crossing Lake Pontchartrain back and forth to New Orleans. Here is that article. Click on the images to make them larger and more readable.
Here is the text from the article:
Good Days On The Lake Recalled
C. Allen Favrot, a resident of Covington and New Orleans, nostaglically recalls the good old days when paddlewheel steamers made excursion trips daily between New Orleans, Mandeville, and Madisonville. Recently he brought The Farmer an article about the SS Camellia, also known as the SS New Camellia. written in September. 1937.
The article says the vessel., a famous fun boat, along with others of her era. "share a common quiet grave in the Tchefuncte river near' Madisonville. Their grave is marked dramatically.
Sticking out of the water near the tree-shaded west bank of the Tchefuncte is what is lett of the boat: a leaning wooden walking beam , support, and parts of a piston, smoke stack and paddle wheel. "Below the surface can be seen shadows of the outline of the deck. At low water, a person in a boat can lean out, put one arm into the water, and touch the deck."
This ship was identified as the New Camellia, and the site is just south of Jahncke shipyard at Madisonville. However, a spokesman at Jahncke said the ship was picked up and moved six- or eight years ago.
The Camellia was renamed the New Camellia when it was rebuilt shortly before 1880. Originally, the paddlewheeler was built in Wilmington, Del. in 1852 and christened the Zephyr. It is estimated she was brought South in 1862, during the War Between the States.
After the war, she was purchased by a New Orleans cotton merchant, August Bone, and renamed the Camellia. Under that name, she was active in Gulf and Lake Pontchartrain trade. After being rebuilt in about 1879, she became one of the most famous of the lake excursion boats.
Damaged by a 1915 hurricane, she was still in service as late as 1917.
Tied up at a Madisonville pier after she was taken out of service because of old age, she quietly and unobtrusively sank one day in 1920. While docked at Madisonville, the New Camellia was utilized to accommodate shipyard workers, that business having started booming with World War I. As she grew more decrepit with age. the "boarders" abandoned ship, and a short time later, the New Camellia slipped gradually down into the river.
Another excursion boat, the SS Pleasure Bay, caught fire at Madisonville, was towed away from the wharf, and sank, sometime back in the 1920's.
Madisonville Mayor Eddie Badeaux, when a youngster, worked aboard the SS Madisonville, an excursion steamer. It went out of service here in 1935, he recalls, and was taken to New York City, where, according to Badeaux, it was still in use as a sightseeing boat a few years ago. He does not know if it still exists. The SS Madisonville was originally named the Hanover.
The boats had large dining rooms, spacious dance halls and top orchestras. They carried hundreds of passengers to St. Tammany beaches and woodlands for picnics, outings. swimming parties. etc. The departures from New Orleans were usually from Milneburg or Spanish Fort.
Other lake-faring boats included the Southland, Charles Dolive, Minnie 13, Margaret and Susquehanna. The lake crossings started early in the 19th century, and ended sometime in the mid or late 1920's. And with that ending went a delightful era of light-hearted fun and gaity, when the livin' was easy. and geared to the tempo and speed of the paddlewheelers.
It must he recalled that automobiles were fairly scarce in the 1920's, and there were no bridges connecting the Orleans side of the lake to the north side. Slow-moving ferries operated at Rigolets and Chef Menteur connecting poorly constructed roads. The old Watson-Williams bridge at Slidell was only a dream and the Causeway was an "impossibility" folk didn't dare dream of.
Following the steamboat excursions came the old NOGNRR's week-end pleasure junkets to all St. Tammany points, from Slidell to Folsom, carrying hundreds of passengers at special round trip rates.
That, too, eventually ended, along with all other train passenger service.
So the era of the passenger trains, like that of the lake and river steamboats, passed into limbo. Which recalls the present fight to save the SS Delta Queen Mississippi river paddlewheeler running from Cincinnati to New Orleans as a passenger vessel. It has been outlawed because it's wooden super-structure is considered a fire hazard.
St. Tammany Farmer Newspaper
August 1, 1970
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