New Basin Canal (New Orleans, Louisiana)

 place with historical importance, historical layer / disappeared object

 Upload a photo

The New Basin Canal, also known as the New Orleans Canal and the New Canal, was a shipping canal in New Orleans, Louisiana from the 1830s through the 1940s.


Small pleasure boats now moor on the only remaining portion of the canal that was important to regional commerce in the 19th centuryThe New Basin Canal was constructed by the New Orleans Canal and Banking Company, incorporated in 1831 with a capital of 4 million United States dollars. The intent was to build a shipping canal from Lake Pontchartrain through the swamp land to the booming Uptown or "American" section of the city, to compete with the existing Carondelet Canal in the Downtown Creole part of the city. Work commenced the following year. Yellow fever ravaged workers in the swamp in back of the town, and the loss of slaves was judged too expensive, so most of the work was done by Irish immigrant laborers. The Irish workers died in great numbers, but the Company had no trouble finding more workers to take their place, as shiploads of poor Irishmen arrived in New Orleans, and many were willing to risk their lives in hazardous backbreaking work for a chance to earn $1 a day. By 1838, after an expense of $1million, the 60 foot wide 3.17 mile long canal was complete enough to be opened to small vessels drawing 6 feet, with $0.375 per ton charged for passage. Over the next decade the canal was enlarged to 12 feet deep, 100 feet wide, and with shell roads alongside. No official count was kept of the deaths of the immigrant workers; estimates ranging from 4,000 to 30,000 have been published, with most historical best guesses falling in the 8,000 to 20,000 dead range. Many were buried with no marking in the levee and roadway fill beside the canal