Old Hammond Highway

Old Hammond Highway is the designation for what was the main traffic route between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Hammond, Louisiana, United States, for a short time in the early 20th century. It was largely replaced by U.S. Highway 51. Parts of the roadway followed natural ridges in the land; other parts were built on pilings and fill through swamp.

  The New Orleans-Hammond Lakeshore Highway was part of Louisiana Highway 33 in the original state highway numbering system (changed in 1955 to the current system).  The route of Highway 33 was defined by the state legislature in 1921 as follows:

Beginning at South Carrollton Avenue and New Basin Canal New Orleans, both sides of the New Basin Canal as far as the New Basin Canal to West End thence along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, through La Branche, Ruddock, Stradder, Ponchatoula, Hammond, Amite, Kentwood, to a point on the Mississippi State Line.

  At that time, the only pre-existing portion of the New Orleans-Hammond route was between Hammond and Ponchatoula.  The road through the swamp south of Ponchatoula and around the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans was constructed in the 1920s.  A canal was dredged through the swamp with the spoils piled up on the side of the canal to form an embankment which was then covered with gravel and shells.

  The portion of the route between Ponchatoula and Frenier, which included a bridge over Pass Manchac, was opened in 1927.  It later became part of U.S. Highway 51 (which departed from the lakeshore road at Frenier and continued south to Laplace) and was eventually blacktopped.  Over the years, the road suffered from subsidence and was replaced by a new Highway 51 in the late 1950s.  This road was then replaced in the 1980s by the present U.S. 51 / I-55 elevated roadway.  The former alignment of U.S. 51 lies just to the east of the current alignment and is still drivable.  The original 1927 road can be seen just to the east of the 1950s road but is not drivable.

Whether or not the portion of the New Orleans-Hammond Highway between Frenier and the St. Charles/Jefferson Parish Line was actually constructed is debatable. According to the 1945 edition of the Jefferson Parish Yearly Review, two miles of the roadway embankment in this section was severed in 1933 for the construction of the Bonnet Carré Spillway.

The remaining section through Jefferson Parish and into New Orleans was likely constructed sometime between 1929 and 1933. The 1929 Sanborn map showing the Bucktown and West End neighborhoods on the Orleans/Jefferson Parish Line shows it as still being under construction in that area. The 1945 edition of the Jefferson Parish Yearly Review states that at the time the Bonnet Carre Spillway was constructed in 1933, the road through Jefferson Parish was "entirely usable." The roadway embankment provided the only flood protection for the community of Metairie from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain. By 1945, it had eroded considerably and was no longer adequate in terms of flood protection. That year, construction of the current levee system was proposed. Today less than a mile of the road, lying on either side of the 17th Street Canal on the Jefferson/Orleans Parish Line, still exists.

There is also a road in the Baton Rouge area called Old Hammond Highway, which was part of the original route between those two cities later assumed by U.S. Highway 190.

See also

• LA 613-1 (part of the Old Hammond Highway still in use)
• LA 426 (Old Hammond Highway in Baton Rouge)