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Now That's INteresting! 
by Sandra S. Juneau
Have you ever wondered about something you’ve read or heard about the northshore? Are you curious about a landmark you’ve seen? Would you like to know more about a local name, a famous northshore resident or the history of a particular location or community? Send your questions to editor@insidenorthside.com for consideration, putting “Now that’s interesting” in the subject line. While we can’t print all of them, we hope that we’ll all learn a bit more about the place we call home.
Dear IN,
You seem to hear the word Pontchartrain a lot |on the northshore. Local streets, the lake, businesses and even a St. Tammany school share its French name. But where did the name come from?
J.R., Mandeville
The lake was created nearly 4,000 years ago. The earliest settlers were the Native American Indian tribes of Bayougoula, Mougoulacha, Chitimacha, Oumas, Tangipahoa, Colapissa and Quinipissalive, who lived in small villages around the lake basin. For the Indians, the lake, with its connecting rivers and bayous, was their means of trading goods with neighboring tribes.
When French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville arrived in 1698, the Indians led him through the waterways to the Wide Water, called Okwa-ta by the Choctaws. In the following year, the French renamed the lake Lac Pontchartrain in honor of Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, who was then serving as Chancellor of France and Minister of the Marine. The town of Pontchartrain is a small village in the Yvelines Province of France, about 12 miles from the Palace of Versailles. Versailles was built during the reign of France’s “Sun King,” Louis XIV, for whom Louisiana is named.
Lake Pontchartrain is the largest lake in Louisiana and the second largest salt-water lake in the United States. About 40 miles wide, it covers an area of 630 square miles and has an average depth of 12 to 14 feet. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest highway bridge over water in the world, spans 23.9 miles from Metairie on the southshore to St. Tammany Parish on the northshore.
