Fifty-five years ago, a group of New Orleans business leaders assembled at the Roosevelt Hotel to celebrate the preliminary draining of the former St. Maxent [AKA Michoud] Tract. Mrs. Joseph Boston (shown center), a direct descendant of Colonel Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, ceremoniously pushed a key to inaugurate the Maxent Pumping Station. Hotel guests watched some 60,000 gallons of water/minute moving from nearly 750 acres. By lowering the water table in this manner, developers anticipated residential, commercial, industrial and recreational developments on a mammoth scale.
Image above: Mrs. Joseph T. Boston of Mobile, Alabama, with her mother, Mrs. J.T. McMahon and various developers. October 1960. "Draining of Land Starts in New Orleans East Land."
Chamber of Commerce News Bulletin XLI:42 (14 October 1960): p.5. Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.
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