1850 Louisville & Nashville Railroad is Established.
The Louisville & Nashville Railroad was chartered in 1850. By 1880, its service had been extended to New Orleans, thru Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile, by acquisition of the New Orleans, Mobile and Texas Railroad. At the same time, the L&N also acquired the oldest railroad west of the Alleghenies-the Pontchartrain Railroad, five miles long, which extended "straight as a string" on Elysian Fields Avenue, in New Orleans, from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain, at Milneburg. This line was abandoned in 1935, after some 104 years of uninterrupted service. For seventy-four years, the L&N linked New Orleans with the Central-South and the Mississippi Valley. ~ Source: http://nutrias.org/~nopl/exhibits/choochoo/page2.htm

1850s West End & Lakeport development begins
The earliest structures were wooden huts raised on stilts. The canal provided a harbor for fishing boats. The people who lived along the canal and out on the lake were squatters who made their living from fishing, crabbing, hunting and trapping, as well as from the rental of boats, the sale of tackle and bait, and the entertainment of vacationers. Development along this area originally occurred in the mid-19th century with a commercial wharf and resort called Lakeport. Steamboats docked at the entrance to the New Basin Canal (now Pontchartrain Blvd.) and at the terminus of the Jefferson and Lake Pontchartrain Railroad where Bucktown is today. The railroad ran along what is now the Orleans-Jefferson Parish boundary at the 17th Street Canal. Dug as a drainage canal along the upper boundary of the Town of Carrollton, it was originally called the Upperline Canal. The Jefferson and Lake Pontchartrain Railroad, 1853-1864, was an extension of the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad (today the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line). At the lake end of the railway were a hotel, restaurants, a bowling alley, dance hall, picnic ground, pleasure garden, and bathing facilities. The place later became a famous amusement park known as West End (of Orleans Parish). Source: Betsy Swanson - at http://www.deanies.com/MM017.ASP?pageno=28 Pictured is the Tug 'Frank' owned by Poitevent-Favre Lumber Company at West End in New Orleans, ca. 1926. Source: http://www.tamnet.com/thenandnow/man16.html#tugfrank