Lincoln Beach amusement park
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Lincoln Beach was an amusement park in New Orleans, Louisiana, functioning from 1939 through 1965. The park was for the area's African American population during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation.
Lincoln Beach was located along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain near Little Woods, in a portion of the Eastern New Orleans section of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans that was little developed in the 1930s. The Orleans Levee Board first designated this section as a swimming area in the lake for "Colored" New Orleanians, then built out additional land in the lake for the amusement park to be built on. The park was similar to the then "whites only" Pontchartrain Beach amusement park on a smaller scale. It featured various rides, games, restaurants, a swimming pool in addition to lake swimming, and frequent live music performances. In the last decade, Fats Domino was repeatedly a featured musical act.
Pontchartrain Beach was desegregated in 1964, and business declined rapidly at Lincoln Beach, which, now rendered obsolete, closed soon after.
Although there have been various proposals to redevelop the Lincoln Beach site, the decaying ruins of the park have remained vacant for decades.
