Ponchatoula Depot

The depot stands where it does because of a surveyor's reading of the ground. James B. Clarke, laying out the railroad town in 1853, put it on the first dry ground north of the Manchac swamp and named the town for the nearby river. The line made Ponchatoula a military target, and the depot was burned in the fighting of 1862 and 1863. The railroad was repaired after the war and a new depot was built in the 1890s. Around 1900 the same tracks began carrying strawberries out, and the first Strawberry Festival followed in 1972.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tickfaw State Park — 12 mi
  A floodplain park on the Tickfaw River, with cypress-tupelo swamp, bottomland hardwoods and about 4.75 miles of trails and boardwalks, plus a nature center with an 800-gallon river aquarium.
• Fontainebleau State Park — 26 mi
  Lakeshore park on the Northshore where Tchefuncte potters, Acolapissa and Choctaw lived, and where 153 people were enslaved at Marigny's sugar and brick plantation by 1840; the mill ruin still stands.

More markers nearby

• USS Ponchatoula Memorial — steps away
• PFC Raymond "Mike" Clausen, Jr. — 0.9 mi
• Hammond Junior College — 4.6 mi
• City Of Hammond — 4.9 mi