Hey, y'all. It's Andrew with Free Tours by Foot New Orleans.
We're gonna do something a little bit different today.
We're gonna take you for a ride on Bayou Saint John. This is
one of New Orleans's natural waterways and going on swamp
tours and stuff is a thing that tons of people do when they
visit us but unbeknownst to a lot of folks, there is natural
wetland or at least think natural things that come from
wetlands right in the middle of the city. We right now are by a
streetcar that runs to the French Quarter. We're by New
Orleans City Park. We're by a gorgeous row of houses along
Esplanade Avenue and if y'all wanna explore that part of the
city more broadly, you can see our videos on City Park and on
Esplanade but this is a part of the city in terms of history
that goes back deeper than even the French Quarter which is
often thought of as the city's first neighborhood and so,
there's a lot of stories to tell here. We're gonna mix up
some of those stories with just some of the experience of being
on a boat in Bayou St. John. We're gonna be doing this ride
with a group of friends and we gotta start by introducing you
to one of those friends. We are able to do this in the first
place. Thanks to the help of our fellow tour company, Kayak
at the Yak Kayak Tours. So, we're gonna meet Sarah, the
person in charge of that. So, y'all, we have here for
starters, Sarah, who is co-founder and co-owner of
Kayak at the Yat Kayak Tours. Thanks for spending some time
with us today. Absolutely. So, as co-founder and co-owner, I
assume you're also co-namer. Yeah. People who are not
familiar with this aspect of New Orleans humor. Can you
explain the joke? Uh well, I mean, it really, there's not
too much thought involved but you know, you know, the old
song, Yakity Yat so talk back. So, we started with that Kayak
but then a yacht is a local person, right? So, then we just
changed the K to a T. So, we're, we are the Kayak Yat. We
talk accents a lot y'all on the channel so far. So, if you're
not familiar with the Yat accent, it is not what you're
hearing right now. Although, I know this points towards your
origin story. No, I'm local but I don't know, I don't have the
Yat accent. Yeah. Gotcha. Well, as a founder of a kayak to our
company. I think you stand for like an important but not
always fully appreciated side of what New Orleans can offer
like this outdoorsy stuff. I don't know if people always
come here thinking or knowing. We're more water than land.
Yeah, totally. So, like this whole side of town like you can
bike, you can hike, all of this stuff. Is that been like, is
that your reason for getting in on these things? Were you a
long-time participant in this stuff and then? Yes, my husband
and I definitely love outdoor sports and this Bayou Saint
John running right through the city is like way under utilize
and at Border City Park which is 1,300 acres of gorgeous
green nature. Um. Greenway at the which is which came after
we started. Yeah, all these beautiful things. Mid City's
kind of like caters more to the outdoorsy people. Yeah. You
know, cuz we have all the green space. Um so yeah, that's we
were already using this and we're like, absolutely. We can
teach others about this. We're a flat town so the biking and
the hiking are a little different than some places but
you want your water to be flat. I mean, we've got some uh um
bridges. Yeah. The Wizard Bridge in particular, that's,
you know, you gotta go into like second gear for that. If
you wanna triathlon this thing, you can have some slopes on
bridges. Great. As far as when you all leave one of these
tours and when you're showing us around the day, what kind of
stuff does one see going along the Bayou? Uh well, you're
gonna see a lot of people. Recreating which is really fun.
Um a lot of people gather around here um and drink, eat,
barbecue, just play, what have you. Um tons of birds, um of
course, the gators. On occasion, they hide from us
mostly. More scared of us than we are. Yeah, a lot of really
beautiful nature like beautiful skies, beautiful sunsets. We do
twilight paddles. So, you know, you get the sun setting over
here and then, you know, if there's a full moon, it always
rises about the same time as the sun is setting so all kinds
of beautiful scenery. Wonderful. Yeah, it's a whole
different perspective being out on the Bayou so. And if folks
did want to find you all out here, I mean, we're in a great
spot. How does one get here? Well, first, you're gonna book
by reservation from our website but um We put in. We launch
right here. We're at the foot of Esplanade Avenue. So, right
by the entrance of City Park. Also, the end of the streetcar
line, the City Park Museum Street Car Line. So, you can
just hop on a streetcar and come right here. Right from the
edge of the French Quarter on Canal Street, y'all. That has
it's endpoint here and it's other one over there. So,
convenient as can be. Yeah. We're gonna be rowing from this
end to the beginning of the Bayou nearby out to Lake Ponce.
So, we'll show you a lot of stuff along the way. We're
gonna get started? Hot dog. See you.
Alright, so welcome to Bayou Saint John uh officially. Uh so
just in general information, Bayou Saint John is about four
miles long um and it averages about fifteen feet deep. Um
it's para body of water is Lake Concentrate uh here to the
north. New Orleans sits basically between the
Mississippi River on the southern end and Lake
Concentrate to the north. Concentrate Conservancy does
weekly water quality tests um and it's uh I didn't check the
results this week but it is generally um you know safe
enough to swim in. Uh you can see the water clarity is
actually pretty good for a South Louisiana Bayou. And
since Hurricane Katrina, there have been a lot of efforts by
the city and different organizations, nonprofits to
really rehabilitate the body.
When uh the Europeans came over here, they very much so largely
um depended on the native Americans to do anything here.
They would have been, they did die in large numbers in the
beginning but they would have died even more had it not done
for the Native Americans. So, many years after uh the
founding of New Orleans that there are no French ships came
here, things like that and so the native Americans were
providing food, um showing them the ways around the land, um
and ultimately showing uh the in the back ways into the city.
The river as a means of travel. So, compared to a river, a
bayou is very similar. It's a long narrow strip of water.
It's like what is a bayou? What distinguishes a bayou from the
river? So, a bayou um is is kind of like a translated to
roughly a river that runs both ways and it's natural form.
This bayou would have served to uh drain the swamp uh with this
whole area was into like drain. Now, due to you know, levy bit
of building in subsidence the mouth of uh the body was at
lower than my contrain so it can't obviously drain in there
anymore. It's really hard to overstate just how important uh
Bayou Saint John and the port city of New Orleans was to the
uh world trade economy um of the eighteen hundreds, right?
Um and so, New Orleans more than anything else is
positioned in this, you know, unique uh geographic position
to give it an economic advantage um over other, you
know, cities in the United States at the time. Um at the
time, all long distance travel and trade is waterborne, right?
And so, you know, Noel Orleans sits you know sort of as the
northern most Caribbean city and it also sits basically at
the mouth of the Mississippi River, right? And so, it
provides access to, you know, um the Caribbean, South
America, the Atlantic trade, while also providing access to
the interior of the continent, right? Population goes from
around 8,000 to like 175 thousand becomes the third
largest city in the United States and Bayou Saint John at
the time is like the lynchpin that uh you know, together, you
know, all of this marine commerce that's going on at the
time, right? Cuz like Trishelle said, it provides access to the
Gulf of Mexico without having to navigate the mouth of the
Mississippi River which at the time was incredibly
treacherous, right? It's obviously a gigantic river with
a huge current, you know, Bayou Saint John provided the
shortcut between the river and the lake and then, there by the
Gulf of Mexico really was the deciding factor for Vienville
to, you know, place the city of New Orleans where it was.
Y'all, we've reached one end of the Bayou which ends pretty
suddenly right here around several things that you would
probably notice if you visited this area. For one thing, we've
got Parkway Bakery which is one of our esteemed poboy joints
and then, as you go around nearby, you've got a big
disused hospital that's been empty since Hurricane Katrina
right across the street from like a high-end doggy daycare,
sort of speaking to the transitions that the city's
been through in the last couple decades and then, you have
space, the Lafitte Greenway, which runs across the base of
the Bayou and actually runs all the way to the French Quarter.
So, what's all around us used to be a part of the body of
water, Bayou St. John was part of a network of Bayou's that
connected across a lot of what is today in New Orleans. This
was a man-made extension of the Bayou though. So, in the Native
American use of this space, the process of getting things from
point A to point B, getting out of the bayou pretty close to
where we are now and then walking over where the French
Quarter is today whereas under the French and Spanish, they
artificially extended the Bayou along this route over here
going right up to the back of the French Quarter shortening
that overland distance but nowadays, it's been long since
filled in and in the same way that a lot of other cities have
turned old railroad routes into long, narrow parks. We've done
the same with this canal and today, it's called the Lafitte
Greenway. So, if you come exploring out here, you'll see
a space that's been used for, you know, outdoor activities
and for gardening for a long time in an unofficial way by
the people who lived along it but it's been made much more
official and enhanced in a lot of ways with playgrounds,
sports areas, with big public art, and with a bike path or a
walking path that runs all the way from the French Quarter out
to here and beyond. So, if you wanted to explore this stuff,
getting a bike in the French Quarter or walking from the
Quarter if you don't mind a little bit of distance, it's a
great way to see a different side of the city than, you
know, a lot of visitors ever end up doing and by the means
than a lot of visitors ever do either.
We're like halfway along the bayou at this point y'all and
the way you know is you get this crazy stuff in the
background. I had never so in years of living in New Orleans,
I had never seen this up close until I rode with y'all one
day. Like, this house is, I wanna call it batshit. It's a
Gallatois house over here. Can you like tell us how this comes
to be like what the story behind this place is? Of
course. So, um in the mid sixties, the Gallatois built
this house and uh a bit fond of New Orleans history. So,
throughout the years, Ms. Skeletois had been collecting
pieces and parts of old New Orleans structures and
warehousing them. So, when they commissioned this house to be
built by Al Ledner for design, they asked him to sort of
incorporate all this stuff. So, there's always like sort of
like a living museum. So, um from the cobblestones in the
driveway uh to the front entrance to the island in the
kitchen, they all come from significant uh newer one's
places. Yeah, this like these like convent windows reused but
turned upside down to just make sure you know you're not in a
convent. It's really, it's incredibly creative. Yeah and
Al Ledner is the architect. So, he graduated from Tulane and
then actually studied with um Frankwood Wright for a bit.
Yeah, so that that puts us in an era here y'all where we're
in like mid-century modern architecture which is not, I
mean, we're a very historic architecture town but like
nineteenth century at the expense of the twentieth a lot
of the time where we see twentieth century architecture
a lot of times like ranch houses in the suburbs we don't
get to see this like much freer expression of it very often but
he's the guy like. Yeah. If you want it. Three houses on this
island and several around this town. So we have this island
that is developed in the mid twentieth century so like why
wasn't this land used earlier than that? Um it's a meander in
the bayou and so it's pretty narrow and crooked um and so it
made transportation like really challenging uh back in the day.
So around the civil war, they dredge this sort of straight
portion um on the west side of it to make navigation easier
and then incidentally an island was created and so in the 50s
and sixties, each gentleman developed it. Um and of course
we know the climate in the 50s and 60s um it was pretty hard
to get your hands on property if you were not white. Yeah.
And so they did not discriminate when they were
selling off these properties. So, it's been ethnically
diverse since then and still is and home to several amazing New
Orleans from civil rights leaders, to politicians,
successful business owners, restaurant tours, musicians,
the whole, the whole gamble. It's incredible. In the heyday
of like urban housing covenants. Yeah. This was
whoever can afford it basically is in. Oh and we're in Gentile
now by the way. So, we started off in Mid City. Now, we're in
Gentilly. Nice. So, you get to pass through several
neighborhoods on this the virtue of this particular tour.
Mostly, we just give you one at a time. Cool. So, shall we be
on out to Lakeview to the last stretch of the paddle? Let's do
it. Alright.
So, Alex, we've made it to Lake Pontchartrain and the whole
time we've been out here, you've been like spotting and
naming various bits of wildlife. So, you were the
person I wanna hear this from. Lake Ponchotrain, not a lake.
Can you elaborate on? I'm sure all this water around us
actually is. Yeah, lake would mean that this is completely
freshwater which is not, it's an estuary which is a mixture
of fresh and saltwater. If you go out through the lake and
then, into Lake Morpa towards the east here, you eventually
make it all the way out to the Gulf of Mexico and this is
completely an inlet from the Gulf of Mexico. So, as you move
down to Bayou becomes more and more fresh but as you move out
to the gulf, more and more soul. And that means a real mix
in terms of like the wildlife. Absolutely. Yeah. What kind of
stuff would you find if someone went fishing out there? So, you
can see a wide variety of different species of fish and
reptiles and amphibians and birds. Um obviously, we have
alligators in the bayou which is, you know, a lot of people's
first question when they come on the tour is there's not
alligators in here and the answer is, yes, of course,
there's an alligators. At the size where one might still find
them cute though, right? Generally? Almost always, yes
and I find them cute up to about feet. So, it's not too
bad for me but some people's definitions are different. Just
gotta make them look up cute in the broadest of dictionary
definitions. Yeah. Yeah. Before they come on the. So, you
always have to define your terms and stuff like that. So,
we've defined estuary, we've defined cute. Um are there, so
and so, when you say that this lets all the way out into the
Gulf of Mexico, we talked earlier about the use of this
as a colonial and O'Neill route for travel. This that's that's
what it's doing. Exactly. Yeah. That was uh you know the
closest route to get to Biloxi from from New Orleans and and
uh you know pretty New Orleans this land mass here um but it's
been, you know, used that way for a very long time. It's uh I
do a lot of fishing out here. I do a little bit of boating out
here and you get to get acquainted with all sorts of
different birds species, corn ranch, anhingas, brown
pelicans, bald eagles are coming back. You have ospreys
and other variety of sorts of rat Mississippi kites are very
prevalent here especially in the spring time. We might get
to see one or two of those today. A variety of waiting
birds and it's just a great place to observe a wide variety
of wildlife. And all that like healthy biodiversity that's
like on it's way back in. That's what we're hoping. Yeah
and you know it's a constant struggle between the problems
and uh some hopeful stuff. Uh it's a much better than it
would have been 30 years ago and uh uh good indications of
healthy populations here are the brown pelican numbers and
the bald eagle numbers as far as birds go and both of those
numbers have been taken back up over recent years. So, there's
a lot of reasons to be hopeful and all this work that's been
done out here, y'all. I mean, to emphasize the sort of like
low watermark, I guess of what it's been up against lately.
Sure. Katrina came, this is where. Right. Everything came
in and everything went back out. So, the cleanup workout
here has been pretty incredible. Absolutely. There's
a lot of really dedicated people who, you know, love to
Bayou and love this neighborhood and put a lot of
into making sure that it's an enjoyable place to recreate.
Y'all know how crawfish came to be down here, right? When the
Acadians were expelled and sit on ships all around, you know,
they they were from uh up north and they really assisted on a
lot of lobsters and they got sent away and the lobsters were
like, hey man, I'm going too and I started crawling down the
United States. Not so much they got taller and
They're just
Come on. It's the basis of my tour. Y'all thanks very much
for watching. Please drop us a like in order to help people
find this video, subscribe to find the next one yourself, and
if you'd like to tip your dive, you can find a way to do that
down in the description. You can also find down there how to
connect with Kayak at Yat Kayak Tours if you'd like to do this
exploration in person with them next time you're in town. So,
look for that URL down below. They are worth your time.
Thanks very much. See you all again soon.