Eastern New Orleans

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Eastern New Orleans is a large section of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Landsat view of Eastern New Orleans.

This is the portion of the city to the east of the Industrial Canal and north of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. It is often called "New Orleans East" as well, although that term is sometimes confined to a smaller section of this area. Eastern New Orleans is a portion of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

The main urban buildup is the section east of the Industrial Canal, which includes such neighborhoods as Lake Kenilworth, Seabrook, Melia, Pines Village, Lake Forest East, Lake Forest West, Edgelake, Littlewoods, Plum Orchard, Bonita Park, Donna Villa, Lake Carmel, Willowbrook, and Camelot. Village de L'Est is known for its Vietnamese community. Eastover is a wealthy gated community.

Landmarks in this part of the city's 9th Ward include Lakefront Airport, Joe W. Brown Park, NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility, and Six Flags New Orleans amusement park.

Further east in this section, the far eastern portion has little urban development, although still within the city limits of New Orleans. It includes the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, Chef Menteur Pass, Fort Macomb, and scattered areas of essentially rural character despite being within the city limits, like Venetian Isles, Irish Bayou and Lake Saint Catherine, and historic Fort Pike on the Rigolets.

"Fountain of the Winds", 1930s sculpture by Enrique Alferez in front of Lakefront Airport

[edit] History

Until the late 19th century, this area was outside of the city limits of New Orleans, although within Orleans Parish. There was little development other than two areas. The first was along the long narrow strip of higher ground along Gentilly Road, along the natural levee of an old bayou. Various farms, plantations, and small villages such as Michoud were along this strip. The other area was the "camps", clusters of houses raised high on wooden stilts, in the shallows along the edge of Lake Pontchartrain, the largest and longest lasting of these being at Little Woods.

In the early 20th century some residential development of the area began, at first as an extension of Gentilly. The Industrial Canal was built starting in the late 1910s and completed in the early 1920s, creating the barrier that would separate the East from the rest of New Orleans.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, Lincoln Beach amusement park was the city's amusement park for the African American community in the era of the Jim Crow laws.

The great growth of the East did not occur until after World War II. New post-war subdivisions were created for those who preferred a more suburban lifestyle. Many developments in the 1960s at first were aimed at taking advantage of white flight, but as the majority of caucausians who abandoned New Orleans with the end of racial segregation instead went west to Jefferson Parish, many of the new developments in the East instead found their prime market to be rising Middle Class African Americans leaving older and poorer sections of the city.

When Hurricane Betsy was bearing down on the city in 1965, Eastern New Orleans was the only section for which an evacuation was called, as it was feared that this new section of the city might suffer extreme effects. However other than light flooding near the Morrison Canal, damage from Betsy was much more modest than feared. Tragically, some of those who evacuated from the East went to the Lower 9th Ward, which flooded disastrously.

Much more development further east was planned during the oil boom of the late 1970s, including a huge planned development called "New Orleans East". Only a portion was built before the oil bust. Many New Orleanians started calling the whole area by the name of the planned development.

Damaged houses in Eastern New Orleans after Katrina

In 2005, the majority of Eastern New Orleans flooded severely from Hurricane Katrina and associated levee failures (see: Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans). Recovery has been slow. As of April 2006, only a handful of businesses have reopened, and utilities and services are spotty in much of the area. Only a fraction of the residents have returned; many of these are living in FEMA trailers as they gut and repair their flood devastated homes. As of November 2006 an estimated 40,000 people have returned to New Orleans East compared to 96,000 before the levee failures but as more residents return to New Orleans and surrounding areas the population is expected to rise.

[edit] Geography

Because Eastern New Orleans, and particularly Michoud, rests on the edge of a fault line, the land and the levees protecting it are sinking at a faster rate than any other part of the state. Recent geological studies project the rate of sinking to be around two inches per year. In addition, experts warn that the area is also sliding to the south towards the Gulf of Mexico. These recent findings have strong long-term implications for rebuilding and repopulation of this part of the city. However the city of New Orleans and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have promised to "do everything possible" to prevent any future failures that could flood East New Orleans and seeing as most residents and officials of East New Orleans view the effects of Katrina as an "isolated event" due to the fact that during New Orleans 300 year history this was an isolated event this is not expected to stop the impact of repopulating East New Orleans significantly.