Covington History Video at the Trailhead Visitors Center

The Covington Trailhead Visitors Center and History Museum features a 12 minute video showcasing the history of Covington. HERE IS A LINK to that video on YouTube. It was created in 2011 and premiered at the Visitors Center opening reception.

The video was produced by Dale Anthony Smith and in 2011 won a Telly Award in two categories: History/Biography and Travel/Tourism. To hear Smith tell of the concept and work that went into the production of the film, click on the image below. 

According to Smith, the video was produced for a permanently installed Museum installation, and the film chronicles the history and development of Covington, LA. It was commissioned by the Mayor and City Council to be the centerpiece of the town's new Visitor Center. "As the Producer, I worked for several years to develop the project... making fundraising calls with the Mayor and Downtown Development Director, working with the Architect to design both the theatre and exhibit space... and finally spending over a year in research, writing, shooting, and editing the piece along with designing the exhibits.

"The sound track was critical. The narrator was finally found to match the voice in my head, and the writing was tailored to that voice. The recording session was the first time I had used the technique of having the narrator read to a pre-edited music bed. I supplied the narrator with a mix of me reading the track (with my best imitation of his voice) over the background music. I supplied the studio with separate tracks of music and rough VO. We played both tracks and then dropped out the rough voice over so the narrator could feel where to lay back or punch through depending on the emotional tone of each section. The recording session took over four hours and the subsequent edit was five full days of cutting just the right takes (or parts of takes)... The background music took over a week to complete prior to the voice over.

"I have been doing these types of museum films for decades now, but this one was special... it was for the little old town where I now live and where my wife grew up... our daughter is actually 7th generation here... As the son of a Coast Guard pilot, moving from Hawaii to Alaska, to Texas, and back to Alaska, I have an appreciation for families who have established deep roots. So, I knew that our family and friends and my daughter's schoolmates would be coming to see the installation... it was a chance to combine my love of filmmaking, and my love of history, with my love of this place. I hope you enjoy the piece... pay particular attention to the flow of music, images, and information.

"The original research draft was over 40 pages, I had to cut it down to just 4 typed pages to keep the running time within reason. One saving grace was that I was able to elaborate on items merely alluded to in the filmthe stories in six exhibit panels and two interactive kiosks. The film acts as an introduction to encourage deeper exploration through the exhibit area," Smith concluded.

Another video about the history of Covington, complete with many photographs, is located AT THIS LINK.

Wooden Boat Festival Aerial Photographs

Here are some aerial pictures of the Wooden Boat Festival in Madisonville some years ago, before all the large homes were built on the east side of the river. Click on the images to make them larger. 

For a look at Wooden Boat Festival pictures at ground level,

CLICK HERE.

Highlights of History by H.A. Mackie

H. A. Mackie of Covington wrote an interesting overview of the Historical Highlights of St. Tammany Parish, and it was published in the June 26, 1953, edition of the St. Tammany Farmer. It was also reprinted on a handout for the Covington Sesquicentennial.

Here is the text as written by H.A. Mackie.

Highlights of History of Covington and St, Tammany Parish, La.

The SETTLEMENT that was to be called Covington was originally named Wharton, located on the east bank of the Bogue Falaya river, where Claiborne now stands. The old courthouse is still there, re-modeled, as a residence. It was used only a short time as a courthouse.

The development of the settlement was rapid, especially after it was moved to the west bank of the river and the name changed from Wharton to Covington, by an act of the State Legislature, passed March 16, 1816. On April 2, 1832, a charter was granted by the State Legislature to the City of Covington.

Covington was named after a prominent citizen of the time, General Leonard Covington. One story goes that a large amount of whiskey was shipped to New Orleans from Covington, Ky., through Wharton which suggested the name. That is probably, only a fable.


High Land

St. Tammany parish was the nearest high land to New Orleans and became the gateway to the north and a source of much needed material for building New Orleans, and other products for the city's development.

New Orleans, being surrounded by water and marshland, the only contact with the rest of the country was by transportation on the Mississippi river and Lake Pontchartrain.

The navigable rivers in St. Tammany parish, offered a desirable means of trading merchandise for raw materials. The Little Tchefuncta, Bogue Falaya and Abita rivers, formed the Big Tchefuncta river about 20 miles from Lake Pontchartrain. The route was directly across the lake to the mouth of the Tchefuncta. Deep water at Covington, made the highland country, with its resources, accessible to New Orleans as far north as the Great Lakes.

The route into New Orleans from the lake was by the new and old canals. Both reached into the heart of the city where the produce, cotton, cattle, hides, wool, timber, charcoal, fuel, wood, naval stores, sand, brick and gravel, supplied the needs of the coming great city, New Orleans.

Tammany Materials Built New Orleans

All of the buildings in New Orleans were made from St. ,Tammany parish materials. To get some idea of how old Covington is, in 1803 the Louisiana Purchase took place in the Cabildo at Jackson Square. The Cabildo buildings, the St. Louis Cathedral and all surrounding structures had been built of material from St. Tammany parish, years before. The trade and traffic of which, had been handled in and around this location.

Before the saw mills were operated here, the logs from the hills of St. Tammany parish were rolled or dragged to the nearest water courses leading to the rivers, made into huge rafts and floated to the mills on the new and old canals in New Orleans, where they were cut into lumber.

The writer remembers well, the rafts of logs that filled the new canal born Claiborne to Broad street and Martin's large saw mill at Galvez street. Sand, gravel, wood, charcoal and gravel were hauled in schooners and barges.

At first, mule teams towed the boats to the head of the canals, but later this chore was done by steam tugs. Much cotton found its way to New Orleans from St. Tammany parish.

Brickyards and Charcoal

Old-timers will remember the charcoal schooners at the head of the canals.St. Tammany charcoal and pine wood was the fuel used most in New Orleans in those days. Brick and sand made up much of the tonnage for the boats. The remains of many brick kilns may be found on the rivers in St. Tammany parish today.

After the settlement was moved to its present location, the river front at Columbia Street became the focal point of land and river traffic. Passenger and freight boats made regular trips to New Orleans, some of which were steam driven.

The country north of Covington for 100 miles was covered with virgin yellow pine, some of the finest in the world. It was government owned, but acquired by settlers through homestead rights. A settler could get title to 180 acres by cultivating and living on ten acres for a period of ten years.

Military Road

A main road was established due north through Mississippi into Tennessee, and was used by Gen. Jackson on his way from Tennessee to fight the Battle of New Orleans. He took a boat at Covington and crossed Lake Pontchartrain to get to New Orleans. The road to Covington was called Military Road, because a military post was established on the river north of Covington. It became the artery of traffic to the north, serving the settlers. from St. Tammany parish to Tennessee.

The settlers would take days, sometimes weeks, to drive their ox teams to town to trade their produce with the merchants and buy provisions to last them for months. Many farms were started along the way. Sheep and cattle business developed, lumber and naval stores operations became extensive and large mercantile houses handled a large volume of business.

A branch of the Union Bank of New Orleans was located on Rutland and New Hampshire streets, the old brick foundations are still on the spot. The manager of the bank lived in the then famous Rosedale Mansion on Portsmouth (now Wharton) and New Hampshire streets. This old mansion was burned about 1899, and the present frame structure was built about 1901.

Bank Buries Money

When the Yankee gunboats came up the river to take Covington, the banks money was hidden in a tank buried in the yard of the owner of the bank. The tank was removed in 1915 by the present owner of the property, but no money was found. If there had been any money in the tank, it would have been Confederate and worthless.

The early activities of the settlement started at Columbia street and the river and radiated out into the forests. Foot paths became wagon roads, then highways and now ribbons of concrete to all parts of the country.

The land on the river front was owned by a man named John W. Collins. On March 19, 1814, he dedicated it to the town and laid out the squares, streets and lots. The record reads, "It is humbly dedicated to the late President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, giving use of all streets, alleys, water courses, with timber thereon, as shown by plat, referred to in the body of this dedication." After the execution of the dedication, Mr. Collins proceeded to sell the lots to interested citizens.

Ox Lots

In the squares, a 20-foot alley was cut through, with an ox lot 120 by 120 feet, in the middle to accommodate the farmers' teams at night, to keep the oxen off the streets. This dedication by Mr. Collins, was a part of the Division of St. John.   

As an illustration of how the town started to develop, the writer has titles and descriptions of property on Portsmouth street (later Independence, now Wharton), between Columbia and New Hampshire, which Includes lots 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15. The following names are recorded, as purchasers of the lots:

Alice Wilson, 1815; Samuel Murphy, 1818; Peter Quinn, 1817; James and Thomas Tate, 1817; John G. Greeves and Laurent Millandon, 1823; James McCoy and Samuel Mallory, 1825; Henry Quinn, 1835; Samuel Davis, 1835; Mrs. Mary Merritt and William Bagley, 1844; William Bagley, 1846; Rev. Victor Jouncourt, 1845 G. Price Durance, 1849; William Bagley, 1850; Mary Ann Dunnica, 1857; Archbishop A. Blanc, 1858; John Ruddock, 1867; Charles R. Bailey, 1868; Rev. Joachim Maneritta, 1870; George Ingram, 1875; Adam Thompson, 1877; Thomas Collins, 1883; James Taylor, 1884; Henry Smith, 1890; St. Peters Church, 1896; Hypolite Laroussini, 1891, H. A. Mackie, 1915.

After the Civil War the railroads came from the north to New Orleans, and commerce and river traffic to and from St. Tammany parish faded. Mercantile houses became country stores, the deep water at the foot of Columbia street filled with sand and only small boats can be accommodated now.

Boll Weevil Obliterates Cotton

The boll weevil took its toll of cotton, the timber played out, the W. P. A. ruined the farmers and with the discontinuance of passenger train service, Covington almost became a ghost town. But with its good climate, timber re-growth, pure artesian water, good drainage, beautiful trees, white sand bathing beaches, Covington has become the place of recreation and health for the people of New Orleans and other parts of the state and nation.

As business people of New Orleans retired, many established homes and beautiful estates in St. Tammany parish, creating a substantial income for the community. A network of good highways have helped the situation greatly.

Covington and surrounding area have large educational institutions, drawing students from other states and foreign countries.

The new $365,000 parish hospital will add much to the desirability of Covington as a residential city. The tung oil industry and cattle raising, have been developed on a large scale in this area.

Businesses of Covington

A naval stores plant was established in Covington in 1911 and has operated continuously since, with a considerable payroll and benefit in land clearing, pine stumps being the raw material used.

There are many very old business places and residences in and around Covington, which would make good reading, if their histories were told. Few cities in America are more interesting and beautiful than Covington.

The parish has other interesting places. Slidell has large and important industries; Madisonville has its shipyards;  Abita Springs and Mandeville are famous recreation and health resorts.

St. Tammany parish is a pleasant and healthful place to live in and has a most promising future. It is 68 miles by road and 35 miles by air from New Orleans.

When the Greater New Orleans Expressway is built, St. Tammany parish will be the front yard of the big southern metropolis and its most beautiful residential district

 End of Mackie article

Images of Printed Material:

Click on the images below to make them larger. 

Goodbee Intersection - 1975

The photograph below shows the Goodbee U.S. 190 and La. 1077 intersection as it appeared in 1975. The view is from the northeast, with the building shown being the location of the Country Boy One Stop. The second photograph shows the Google Maps aerial view from 2016. To see a larger view, click on each image. To see the Google Maps view in a browser, click here. 

1975

2016

Shopping Centers

No overview of St. Tammany Parish would be complete without turning the spotlight on the shopping centers. Most everyone likes to go shopping every once in a while, whether it be for things they need, want, or just curious to look at, hold in their hands, and fantasize about owning. Here are some photos from across the parish of shopping centers, large and small. Click on the images below to see a larger version. 

Mandeville In The Year 2076

After an interview with Mayor Bernard Smith of Mandeville about the future of his community, this article was published in December of 1976. It was the year of the American Bicentennial, and many community leaders were predicting great things for their towns over the next 100 years. CLICK ON the image below to read a larger version.

Mayor Bernard Smith

Covington Grammar School Classes

Here are four class photographs from Covington Grammar School, the three story building on Jefferson Avenue in Covington. Click on the images to make them appear larger.

1929

1930

1949

1947

and fifty years later...

All Saints Day Candles in the Cemetery

For many years, Lacombe area residents have visited their local cemeteries and placed flowers and candles around the graves of their departed loved ones (and ancestors) in a well-known All Saints Day tradition. Every November 1 (the day after Halloween) dozens of participants join in the unusual activity that is meaningful, fascinating and somewhat curious on how it all began.

There are theories, and HERE IS A LINK to an article about one of those theories, but basically it is a family thing that has gone on for decades and probably will continue for decades more. 

Mandeville's Lakefront Seawall - The Early Days

This is the story of Mandeville's seawall on Lake Pontchartrain from the early 1900's onward. Below is a photo of the Mandeville lakefront around 1900, when it was just a string of sandy beaches with cypress stumps and big piles of driftwood everywhere. Click on the images below to see a larger version.

Before the seawall, there were sand beaches and driftwood.

 

 In the 1900’s and 1910’s, they tried to protect the lakefront from erosion with timber pilings.

But the timber bulkhead didn’t last long.  The relentless wave pounding action of Lake Pontchartrain took its toll. 

 

 

Public interest continued to mount on building a better seawall. A contract was signed as early as 1913.

 Problems arose during construction, however. This newspaper headline is from 1916. This became, as it was called back in the early 20th century, a political issue.

 

 

Efforts to build a better barrier continued until 1937 when the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, constructed a concrete seawall  and it helped stop beach erosion for a while.

The WPA assigned 150 men to build a better concrete seawall.

 

 

Mandeville Harbor

 

A sturdy well-built concrete seawall

Work done in 1966

  By the early 1970’s, that seawall was starting to crumble again. Large sections opened up to sandy beaches again. Here’s a picture I took in 1972. 

Below are more pictures of the seawall falling into the water. In some places they had tried to repair it with bricks, throwing rip rap into the ever widening holes caused by erosion. It was becoming unstable, dangerous, too dangerous to stand on the edge of the seawall to look at the lake.
 

 

 

Here’s a picture of someone in 1973 jumping over a large break in the seawall.

 Another seawall renovation project took place in the 1970’s, and 20 years later, another massive seawall building project again took place. 

According to an article in the Times Picayune in August of 2017, it’s now time to re-visit rebuilding and repairing the seawall. It’s a never-ending problem because of the never-ending wave action of Lake Pontchartrain reclaiming the lakefront through erosion.

In that article Kim Chatelain said the first seawall was made of wood and was severely damaged by the 1893 hurricane that hit the New Orleans area. “Two years after the hurricane of 1893 destroyed Mandeville's original seawall, which protected only the eastern side of the city, town leaders constructed a new and larger seawall that extended farther to the west,” she wrote. “In 1913, the city decided to build a concrete wall to provide further protection, according to historical accounts.”

She went on to explain that in 1915, before the concrete barrier was completed, another powerful hurricane hit the area, destroying the partially-built wall. The town resumed construction, however, and finished the project.

Ms. Chatelin’s article noted that in the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration public works initiative brought in more than 150 men to build a new seawall that performed admirably for more than five decades.  That seawall lasted until Hurricane Andrew decimated it in August of 1992. 

In response to that event, U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston “tacked $5.3 million onto a hurricane relief spending bill for the (currently) existing seawall,” the Times Picayune article said. 

Because of the continuing erosion, wear and tear caused by the wave action of Lake Pontchartrain, millions of dollars are spent keeping the seawall intact. But what would have happened if the seawall had never been built? What if new seawalls had never been put in to stop the onslaught of erosion?

Above is an aerial photograph from Google Earth that shows the west end of Lakeshore Drive. On the right is the part of Mandeville that has been protected by the seawall. On the left is the natural shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain that hasn't been protected by a seawall. 

In this view, one can see the “natural curving shoreline” that makes up the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. At right is the curving shoreline in front of Fontainebleau State Park, and at left is the continuation of the natural shoreline at Sunset Point Park. What if we were to draw a line following what would appear to be the natural curve without the seawall in place?

Here’s a line that shows us what the natural curve of the shoreline would have been without the concrete seawall protecting it. The lakefront would be gone, Lakeshore Drive would be gone, and half of the first block would be gone. All of that is still there, however, because of  the miracle of a concrete seawall.