Tracing the Old Railroad

As the mercury in our thermometers creeps downward, we can begin to think about fall day trips and excuses to stay overnight in B&Bs within a few hours of home. As it happens, Covington, Abita Springs, Mandeville, and Slidell are situated along an all-but-forgotten railroad line about an hour east of Baton Rouge. The four towns, plus Lacombe, are points along the Tammany Trace, the state’s only rails-to-trails bicycle road. 

Passenger trains stopped running on what is now the trace in the 1930s, but freight trains stayed busy hauling lumber and bricks to New Orleans from towns along the line. The Salmen Brick and Lumber Co. helped make Slidell one of the biggest producers of brick and lumber in the South. Millions of the company’s bricks ended up in New Orleans buildings: the St. Charles Hotel and the Times-Picayune building on Camp Street, for instance. The City of New Orleans ordered twenty-three million bricks for construction of its sewer and drainage system.

Nowadays, the family-friendly trace is one of the safest places in Louisiana to ride a bicycle. There are no cars on the trace; it takes a few miles of riding before you stop looking over your shoulder for vehicular traffic. You must be vigilant at places where the trace crosses highways and neighborhood streets. Motorists, though most of them are welcoming and on the lookout for cyclists, have the right of way. There are stop signs for cyclists at these intersections, so be sure to obey them.

Bicyclists share the converted railroad bed with occasional roller bladers and runners. Just off the trace, horse riders thread their way through pine forest. 

If you don’t ride a bicycle, you’ll still want to know the locations of cycling trailheads on the Tammany Trace because parking lots and places to start rides are at the hearts of the four towns’ historic districts. Ending at U.S. 190, the Tammany Trace hasn’t made it to Slidell’s Olde Towne, yet; but there are plans to extend the trace to that city’s historic district.

The towns along the trace are so close to each other by car that they may be treated collectively as a day trip, but there’s enough to do in each place to make return visits.

Covington

Today, signs direct visitors to the Columbia Street Landing on the Bogue Falaya River, launching point for kayaks and a seasonal concert venue today, but in the 1800s, a shipping point for lumber, pine products, and agricultural produce bound for the New Orleans market.

New Orleans’ yellow fever epidemic in 1878 led to Covington’s being named “the most healthy place in the United States.” The designation, welcomed by the merchants and hoteliers of Covington, was based on the little Northshore town’s low number of deaths per population in the 1890 census compared to New Orleans’ death toll from fever.

The oil bust of the late 1980s hurt Covington’s historic downtown of old businesses, hotels, shops, and restaurants. The welcoming face of cottages, graceful old houses, neat lawns, coffee shops, and B&Bs today is partly the result of the National Main Street Program administered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Patrick Brooks, 31, watches the passing parade of life from his bicycle shop on East Gibson Street, a half block from the Tammany Trace Covington trailhead. Brooks, who came to Covington in 1996, worked in a restaurant downtown and discovered the location for his bicycle shop on a stroll. “Covington has this old town charm,” he said. “It’s got the best restaurants. It’s artsy. Abita Springs is more hippy. Mandeville is yuppie. Big houses. There’s an old section of Mandeville, but it’s mostly one big suburb. Lacombe has a beautiful bayou; it’s more blue collar—lot of fishing. Slidell is like eastern New Orleans. Big city.”

Much of new Covington looks like the rest of America—businesses, gas stations, convenience stores—but the clutter yields suddenly to old Covington, and the relief is breathtaking. You’re in a small American city that Hollywood likes for movie settings. Three rivers—the Bogue Falaya, the Abita, and the Tchefuncte—thread their way through town. Brooks rents kayaks along with bicycles, incidentally.

The towns along the trace are so close to each other by car that they may be treated collectively as a day trip, but there’s enough to do in each place to make return visits.

For places to eat, Brooks recommends Del Porto for contemporary Italian, Lola for “fine Southern seafood,” Bear’s Restaurant for poboys, and, across the street from the bicycle shop, Mattina Bella for breakfast and lunch. For music, he suggests the Columbia Street Tap Room; the food also comes recommended. There’s a relatively new hot spot called Hook’d Up that has good food. Brooks’ favorite place is The Green Room, a popular place since Hurricane Katrina with two-dollar beers and the smoke you’d expect in what Patrick affectionately called a “dive bar.”

The Covington Trace Trailhead is the start of the thirty-one mile Tammany Trace. The trailhead is close to downtown shops, restaurants, and bed-and-breakfast accommodations. Made to look like a train station, the trailhead has a clock tower, amphitheater, covered marketplace, restrooms, museum/visitor’s center and a small movie theater. The museum is open Wednesday and Friday from 10 am to 2 pm, Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm, and Sunday from 12:30 pm to 4:30 pm. There’s a farmers market every Wednesday and concerts year-round, including the Rockin’ the Rails concert series in April and October. The Covington Art Market is the first Saturday of the month. There is a calendar of events on the Covington website.

Warning: If you start your trace ride at the Covington trailhead, you’ll have to navigate the dangerous crossing at busy Highway 21, not far along. 

Abita Springs

At Abita Springs, just east of Covington, the Abita Brewing Company has sought to improve the curative natural springs by turning its waters into beer. A tiny downtown, a public park, and the parking lot across the street from the Abita Brew Pub comprise the trailhead of the bike path. 

Start pedaling and you’re out of downtown in no time; pass the Abita Mystery House (also known as the UCM Museum, as in you-see-um museum) on the left and you’re heading for Mandeville. But not so fast … Abita Springs isn’t just a brew pub, a little museum, a water pad for children, a nineteenth-century bandstand, and a little collection of stores. People live here.

Torri Rodriguez, 19, minding the shop one morning at the Abita Mystery House, grew up in Mandeville. She’s called Abita Springs home the last two years. “I like Abita Springs because of the people,” she said. “I like Mandeville, too, but everything’s so close it doesn’t matter. I feel safe on the Northshore.”

Suzanne Harper grew up in New Orleans. She’s lived in Abita Springs for thirty-two years. Harper, 62, lives near Abita Creek. “I guess it’s the Abita River when it’s raging,” she said. Her house sits ten feet in the air for when the creek goes river. “Then, I use a kayak to get in and out,” she said.

“This is a small artists’ town,” she said. “A lot of cool people live here. There’s the Women’s Center, a place of healing and transformation. I teach t’ai chi there. Every Sunday, there’s a farmers market at the trailhead and street musicians in the park.”

A massage therapist who works with Parkinson’s patients, Harper likes the Abita Springs Café, the Abita Brew Pub, and Mama D’s Pizza. There’s Rosie’s Tavern for local color next door to Artigue’s Abita Market, a pretty colorful place, itself. Artigue’s is a good place to provision for riding the trace if you start in Abita Springs.

“Abita started to grow about ten years ago,” Harper said. “The trace had a lot to do with it. It attracts people. After (Hurricane) Katrina, the town really started to grow. Mandeville’s getting crowded, too, and Covington.”

Mandeville

The new part of Mandeville looks like the rest of twenty-first century America, but the part of town between U.S. 190 and Lake Pontchartrain is why people rush to live in this old lake town resort.

The trace trailhead is a made-to-look-like train depot that accommodates a music venue, farmers market, and interactive water pad for children. Ride or drive toward the lake, and you pass lovely turn-of-the-old-century cottages that make you want to ask about real estate prices. Big houses sitting atop columns of steel rods and cinderblocks attest to the power of wind and hurricane-driven lake water.

Don’z on the Lake faces Lake Pontchartrain. Storm spray from the lake finds the big, plate glass window. It’s that close. Another dive bar, don’t even think about getting a drink there if you find cigarette smoke offensive.

For more genteel drinking and eating, there’s McClain’s Pizzeria just up the street that runs beside Don’z. Park your bicycle under the pizza place and climb the inside stairs. Across the street, there’s The Beach House Bar & Grill with good burgers and ice-cold beer.

Marlaine Peachey in the mayor’s office likes the music at the Dew Drop Jazz and Social Hall. Visit the old club’s website for the fall concert schedule. Nightly, there’s Nuvolari’s on Girod Street (a bar, nice restaurant, and music) or Ruby’s on Lamarque (an old road house with a bar and music).

Slidell

For serious bicyclists, the goal is to ride from Covington to Slidell and back in a day. That’s sixty-two miles. It’s flat as a board (remember, it started life as a railroad bed), but it’s still sixty-two miles round-trip. Visit the Tammany Trace website, and you’ll see that you can start at the trailheads and ride as far as time or your legs allow in either direction.

The stretch of trace between Mandeville and Slidell offers Fontainebleau State Park, site of the ruins of a sugar mill and a campground with cabins to rent. Further on, there’s the Bayou Lacombe bridge with a tender and a lovely view of the water. Older websites say there are plans for restrooms at the bridge. The restrooms are there.

Though the trace has yet to reach Slidell’s Olde Towne, the last few miles of the trace are a nice ride. You can leave your car at the John Davis Park near the Lacombe trailhead to ride the approximately seven miles to the trace’s end at U.S. 190.

Bonnie Vanney wrote the book Slidell, which is in the Images of America series. As much as she likes her hometown, she wouldn’t call it a “destination city.” “Mandeville is high dollar,” Vanney said in an old New Orleans accent. “We’re Walmart. Mandeville is Rouse’s.”

“When we were kids,” Vanney said, “we drove to Slidell from New Orleans. “It was like a Sunday drive across the lake. We’d stop at White Kitchen on Front Street. It was a restaurant and bar. There were slot machines. There was gambling. There were spas.”

Married to a Slidell city councilman, Vanney has lived in Slidell since 1970. “I’d love to market Slidell,” she said, “but the festivals are the time to come.”

Olde Towne is Slidell’s ten-square-block downtown historic district, with antiques and specialty shops, art galleries, and museums. There is an antiques festival in the fall and spring as well as year-round history, science, and fine-arts exhibits at the Slidell Cultural Center.  

As they have since the 1800s, trips to the Northshore take us out of ourselves, stretch our legs and minds cycling or walking or even shopping. We get to sleep in comfortable, strange beds that will make our beds at home welcoming. And we look forward to doing it again.