The St. Tammany and New Orleans Railways and Ferry Company, known locally as the Motor Road, was a 13.60-mile interurban railway in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, connecting Covington and Abita Springs with a steamship pier at Mandeville on Lake Pontchartrain. Chartered in 1906 by land developers Clay Riggs and Joseph Birg, it opened on February 13, 1909 using gasoline motor cars and was reorganized and electrified in 1915 as the St. Tammany Railway and Power Company. It was the first railway of the interurban type built in Louisiana and the last to adopt electric power. The company entered receivership in January 1918 and its assets were sold for scrap in June 1918, a court-appointed auditor having found that the railway lost $146,973.08 over its nine years of operation.
The railway was built with the aid of special property taxes voted by two parish wards, and was closely tied to the promoters' land holdings along its route.
Background The north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, marketed as the "Ozone Belt" for its supposedly healthful climate, developed in the late nineteenth century as a resort area serving New Orleans. The East Louisiana Railroad connected New Orleans with Covington and Mandeville in the late 1880s, but was obliged to circumnavigate Lake Pontchartrain; direct steamship service across the lake competed successfully with it. Passengers landing by steamer at Mandeville were poorly served for onward travel to Abita Springs and Covington. In the 1890s a short mule car railway was built out of Abita Springs to reach the East Louisiana Railroad at Three Rivers, about a mile away.
Promotion and land acquisition A railway from Covington to Mandeville via Abita Springs, with steamship connections to New Orleans, was announced publicly in May 1906. Riggs, described as having engineered the deal, had by then spent twelve months buying land in the Third and Fourth Wards of St. Tammany Parish between Covington, Abita Springs and Mandeville; contemporary reporting noted that the purchases had closed gaps in existing holdings to the point that a rider could travel from Covington to the lakeshore almost entirely on land owned or controlled by the enterprise.
Riggs described a projected 35.5-mile axis running from Canal and Carondelet streets in New Orleans to the Greenlaw Lumber Company mill at Ramsay, four miles north of Covington, and spoke of eventually covering some eighty square miles of the Ozone Belt with electric roads. He argued that cheap and frequent service would allow wage earners as well as men of means to live on the north shore and commute daily to New Orleans.
The charter was executed on May 15, 1906 before Harrison Rankin Warren, clerk of court and ex-officio notary public, at Covington, and recorded in Mortgage Book L of St. Tammany Parish. It fixed the corporation's domicile in Covington, its capital stock at $300,000 in 3,000 shares, and its term at ninety-nine years. Clay Riggs, Joseph Birg and Lewis L. Morgan were named as the first board of directors; the charter was also signed by O.Z. Williams, Warren Thomas, E.J. Frederick, C.S.E. Babington and Harvey E. Ellis.
The objects declared in the charter extended well beyond the railway itself. In addition to constructing and operating a line from Covington to Lake Pontchartrain with connecting boats, the company was authorized to build and operate steamships, docks, wharves and ferries; to establish electric plants and generate and distribute electricity for hire for light, heat and power; to sink wells and sell water; to buy and sell lands for profit.
The company retained substantial real estate throughout its existence. In 1910 the parish press described the Helenburg tract "of the St. Tammany Railways and Ferry Company" as a townsite being promoted to investors, and lots in Covington and Mandeville remained in the company's name at its liquidation in 1918.
The railway's route became the spine of several land promotions. Besides the company's own Helenburg tract, Ozone Park was established about three miles north of Mandeville in 1909 by the Consolidated Land Company of New Orleans, and Alexiusville was promoted by the Joness Real Estate Company. Cottages at Ozone Park were supplied from an artesian well reported in 1910 to flow 180 gallons a minute, and in 1911 about ten acres at Helenburg and Ozone Park were planted in grapes and vegetables under a single manager, with a canning plant contemplated. Lots at Ozone Park appeared in parish tax sale listings through the 1910s. Public subsidy The enterprise was financed in part by special property taxes voted by the Third and Fourth Wards of St. Tammany Parish. A first round of elections was held on August 22, 1906, on a levy of five mills for ten years. Both wards approved. In the Third Ward 178 votes were cast in favor and 91 against, representing $175,312 in assessed property value for and $107,720 against; in the Fourth Ward the vote was 134 to 4, representing $96,296 for and $1,780 against. The results were proclaimed on August 24, 1906 by election supervisors Lewis L. Morgan, W. E. Parker and Warren Thomas. Morgan had signed the company's charter as one of its three original directors three months earlier.
A second round followed a year later. On July 9, 1907 the parish Police Jury adopted ordinances calling further special elections for August 20, 1907, this time on a levy of three mills for ten years, capped at $5,000 a year in the Third Ward and $3,000 a year in the Fourth. The petitions were signed by 236 and 104 qualified property taxpayers respectively. Conditions attached to both required that the line be built into the corporate limits of Covington, Abita Springs and Mandeville; that the tax become collectable only after the railway was completed and in operation; and that work commence within ninety days of the promulgation of the result and be completed and in operation within eighteen months thereafter.
Only property taxpayers could vote, and election commissioners recorded the assessed value of each voter's property alongside the ballot, returns being made of both the number of votes and the assessed value for and against.
Construction and opening Construction began in 1908. Hennick and Charlton record that the promoters spent little time or money on the work: track was laid on level ground with practically no ballast, rails weighed only 45 pounds to the yard, and crossties were placed 3,000 to the mile.
On October 10, 1908 the town of Covington granted a franchise to lay track along its streets, entering the corporate limits on the west bank of the Bogue Falaya River near the south boundary of the Sulphur Springs Addition, then along Dewey Avenue, Lee Ferry Road, Kirkland Street and Theard Avenue to a point near New Hampshire Street, with a wye connection off Kirkland at Columbia Street. The ordinance required rails to be laid level with the street surface and all crossings to be maintained by the company.
In November 1908 the company obtained an injunction in the Twenty-Sixth Judicial District Court restraining the New Orleans Great Northern Railroad from interfering with its crossing of the Great Northern's tracks. The petition recited that the Great Northern had given assurance that no opposition would be made to the crossing, so that no expropriation suit had been filed; that after the crossing was built the Great Northern removed it; and that the company had replaced it and was threatened with its removal again. L. L. Morgan appeared as attorney for the petitioner.
Service between Covington and Mandeville opened on February 13, 1909. Two additional cars and a trailer arrived in March 1909, the trailers being of the open "picnic" type.
Route The line ran approximately fourteen miles from Covington to Mandeville. From the Covington station at Theard and New Hampshire streets the track ran through the town streets, crossed the Bogue Falaya on a high wooden trestle, extended east about two miles, turned southeast to cross the New Orleans Great Northern, and reached Abita Springs about a mile further. Turning south, it passed Helenburg, Ozone Park, Chinchuba and Hansborough to reach Mandeville, crossing the Abita River at Abita Springs, Pontchatalowa Creek at Ozone Park and Chinchuba Bayou between Chinchuba and Hansborough. Through Mandeville the line ran via Wilkinson, Monroe, Adair, Jefferson, Coffee and Lake streets, then onto a pier extending several hundred feet into Lake Pontchartrain, terminating at a shed and small dock used by the steamships. A Sanborn fire insurance map of Mandeville surveyed in June 1915 shows the company's car barns on Coffee Street.
Published timetables list intermediate stops at Chinchuba, Ozone Park, Helenburg and Abita Springs. There were no operators or agents at intermediate stations.
Operations, 1909 to 1915 Schedules and fares
An August 1910 advertisement lists thirteen trips daily in each direction, with an hourly schedule through the afternoon from 2:00 to 8:00 p.m., the last car leaving Mandeville at 10:00 p.m. and Covington at 11:00 p.m. The company described the line as a fourteen-mile ride through the piney woods to the lake shore, connecting there with fast steamers to New Orleans twenty-two miles away, and advertised "NO DIRT, NO CINDERS, NO SMOKE."
An April 1912 timetable shows eight trips daily in each direction, with a running time of about fifty minutes between Mandeville and Covington. Cars left Abita Springs for Covington 35 minutes after Mandeville departure time and for Mandeville 15 minutes after Covington time. Round trip fares were 45 cents between Mandeville and Covington, 35 cents between Mandeville and Abita Springs, and 15 cents between Covington and Abita Springs, with intermediate travel at three cents a mile and a hundred-mile card available for $1.50.
Service was seasonal. An hourly schedule operated during the summer of 1910 was reduced to weekends only in September 1910 and discontinued in November 1910 in favor of two-hourly headways. By August 1913 the company was advertising hourly service after 1:00 p.m. and half-hourly service on Sundays after 2:00 p.m.
Certain trips connected with the lake steamers, and timetables carried notes to that effect. The connecting boat is identified in 1910 as serving West End and in March 1912 as the steamer Dolive. Hennick and Charlton describe steamship service operated by the Louisiana Steamboat and Ferry Company between Mandeville, Madisonville and Milneburg, latterly by the sidewheeler New Camellia and, from July 1916, the faster Mandeville.
Excursion traffic and local relations In May 1909 a correspondent to the St. Tammany Farmer complained that a 50-cent fare differential meant that nine of every ten excursionists arriving by boat remained in Mandeville rather than continuing to Covington or Abita Springs, and argued that the people of those towns had voted the tax specifically to attract that traffic. He called for a combined boat and rail fare matched to the New Orleans Great Northern's, and for hourly summer service.
The company introduced 25-cent round trip excursion tickets between Mandeville, Abita Springs and Covington from May 1, 1910, initially on Tuesdays and Fridays, shifted in September 1910 to Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, and offered daily by 1913, when children under fourteen travelled for ten cents.
In March 1910 the Abita Springs town council held a special meeting for the purpose of notifying the company that it must build its tracks up to the intersection of the New Orleans Great Northern tracks at Level Street; Clay Riggs attended by request. The matter was unresolved when the council changed hands, and in May 1910 the incoming administration voted to take up the company's proposition.