Shell Road
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
11:15 AM
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The famous "Shell Road" is one of the specialties of New Orleans, It extends for about six miles back to Lake Pontchartrain. The road is built upon piles, by which it is raised a few feet above the swamp. Its surface is composed ofഀ the shells of a species of clam, of which vast embankments are found on the lake. These are ground down and packed together by the pressure of innumerable wheels and hoofs, into a compact body as white, and almost as firm, as solid marble. It furnishes one of the most delightful drives in the world.
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[From
the Harpers Weekly, March 30, 1861]
Pasted from <http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/march/new-orleans.htm>
43 By 1853, at least, the road through Abó pass was one of the best in New Mexico. Carleton says
"these passes are known, in the language of the country, as Los Puertos de Abó. The summit of the
right hand pass is 19 miles and 63 yards from Casa Colorada,
and lies east twenty degrees south from that town. The road for this whole
distance is by far the finest we had seen in New Mexico, and is not surpassed,
in any point of excellence, by the celebrated shell road at New Orleans;"
Major James H. Carleton, "Diary of an excursion to the ruins of Abo, Quarra, and Gran Quivira, in New Mexico, under the Command of Major James
Henry Carleton, U.S.A.," Ninth
Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution(Washington,
D.C.: Beverley Tucker, Senate Printer,
1855), p. 299.
Pasted from: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/sapu/hsr/hsrn.htm