Mile 101.5 LBD — “The Fly” -- Audubon Park -- Audubon Zoo

John Ruskey

26 Apr 2026 � 1 min read

One of the most beautiful of city parks in America, Audubon Park is a 300 acre tract with lagoons, bike paths, outdoor swimming pool (open Summer), oak trees (including the “Tree of Life”), Zoo, and Golf Course. But it wasn’t always that way. It was once a swampy plantation, too wet to make any valuable crop. It was a muddy camp for Confederate, then Union Soldiers (including the historic 9th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers - the first black soldiers in the United States military). Then it became ground zero for a back-room land-grab deal that eventually caused the impeachment of a Louisiana Governor. Finally the great landscape architect John Charles Olmsted, whose firm had developed Central Park in New York, overhauled the park. Audubon Park hosted the 1884 World’s Fair, which is believed to be the original transmission point of the fateful eichhornia crassipes, the Water Hyacinth. Well-meaning members of the Japanese delegation gave them away as gifts to fair-goers, who delighted in the delicate violet flowers that sprout from the plants like honey combs. The hyacinth, in turn, delighted in their new swampy surroundings. They clogged so many waterways across the South that in March of 1910, the United States House of Representatives debated H.R. 23261, a bill that would appropriate $250,000 to import “useful new animals” - hippopotamuses - to deal with the nuisance plant. If you walk along the road to the downstream end of the Fly, until the road turns away from the river and crosses the railroad tracks, you can experience the “The Tree of Life,” also known as “The Tree.” It is too huge to describe here. If on your journey you have seen trees as big or magnificent as The Tree, the Rivergator wants to know about them! To get to The Tree, follow the road as it leads away from the river. To your right, you’ll see tennis courts, to your left, if you’re lucky, you’ll see giraffes sticking their heads up over the fences of the zoo. Keep walking for a few minutes and The Tree is on your left. A walk to St. Charles Avenue at the end of Audubon Park will get you to Tulane University and Loyola University.

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