Pontchartrain Beach

In its heyday

Pontchartrain Beach, New Orleans, Florida, was founded by Harry J Batt Sr and opened in 1928 across from an existing amusement resort.
  The original location is the present-day lakefront neighbourhood of Lake Terrace, early in the 1930's construction started for a new sea wall, this lead to Pontchartrain Beach moving to a new location (the lake end of Elysian Fields Avenue).
  The beach had large art deco style bathhouses, swimming pools and an amusement ride called Zephyr. There was also concession stands, live music with locals musicians playing and touring musicians, most famously Elvis Presley played here. The summer shows that they had would change every few years to keep the guest entertained.

Just before the entrance gates, there was a Bali Hai Tiki style restaurant, and another restaurant selling hamburgers and seafood called ShipAhoy was popular among visitors.
  Once the beach became popular the beach added more attractions for the family to enjoy, this was a golf course and a petting zoo with farm animals and a red barn house. This petting zoo operated for a few years.

The sign that went up about the water

On September 23rd 1983, Pontchartrain Beach was sold, this was in part due to the decline in attendance. Many of the rides at the beach were sold. Quite a few ended up at Gulf Shores, Alabama in a small amusement park, but unfortunately these ended up being destroyed in the 2004 hurricane Ivan. Four of the antique carousels are located on the boardwalk in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Myrtle Beach is a vacation resort, with a 60 mile string of beaches, and is as much known for its celebrity designed gold courses as it is for the boardwalk which has an old fashioned family kingdom amusement park, souvenir stands, arcades and restaurants. It also boasts of a Sky Wheel, which is one of the country's tallest ferris wheels.

For many years the beach was unused due to safety concerns at the beach, but the quality had improved over decades and the sand beach was reopened to the public, but drownings occurred again leading to the beach being closed. Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation are restoring the beach for use as a public area, no date has been given but many believed it would start this year. On November 16th 2016, it was announced that the foundations new executive director is Kristi Trail. Kristi plans to restore the publics faith in the beach by drastically improving the water quality, so hopefully we will see some improvements happening soon. As for now, the land that housed the park is now used by the University of New Orleans Research and Technology Park and the mile long sand beach is still accessible to the public.