Want to get to New Orleans in the 19 th cent  

 

Ship Island, about 12 miles offshore from Biloxi, was the only natural
> harbor in this part of the Gulf Coast. 

 While one way of getting to New
> Orleans was up the Mississippi, the sinuous river route was quite long.
> So the best and fastest route into New Orleans was to the natural harbor
> at Ship Island,

then via boat through the Mississippi Sound, through the
> Rigolets or Chef Mentour Pass, into Lake Pontchartrain,

up Bayou St. John
> through the back swamps, and then by portage 2miles over a natural ridge
> to the riverfront. 

This was literally the back door into New Orleans, but
> was the preferred route from the Gulf,

and in fact the existence of the
> route was Iberville's reason for founding New Orleans on its present site.
>

Through the 1700s and 1800s the Coast was nearly totally cut off from the
> mainland by swamps nearly impassable pine forest laced with rivers and
> bayous, so the MS Gulf Coast had much tighter ties to New Orleans, and
> N.O. to Biloxi, than to the hinterlands.  

 Incidentally, Mobile never
> amounted to much as a port at this time because of the massive oyster
> reefs blocking access to Mobile Bay (a channel was eventually cut).
>
> In the War of 1812 the Brits tried to get into N.O. via the back route but
> locals from near Bay St. Louis refused to show them the route, and they
> were forced to go up the river to defeat at Chalmette. 

It was only
> possible for the Federals to take N.O. so quickly during the Civil War
> because the Confederates had left the Mississippi Coast essentially
> undefended. 

 The Feds seized Ship Island barely 5 months after the start
> of War, to be used as its base of operations against New Orleans and the
> rest of the Gulf Coast. New Orleans fell to the Federals about seven
> months later.
>
> In the late 1800s the NO & Mobile railroad (now the CSX) was actually a
> passenger line with extra trains on Fridays and Sundays to move crowds
> between N.O. and the MS Coast. 

The cultural connection was still vibrant
> when my family moved to the Coast in 1967.  Our news, television, and
> radio came out of N.O., and when New Orleanians wanted to go to the beach,
> they came here.to Mississippi as did Louis Sullivan (excerpt)   
> to some