A railroad town on the water
Slidell grew up along the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad in the 1880s. A centennial marker on Second Street records that the town was named for diplomat and U.S. Senator John Slidell by his son-in-law, Baron Frederic Erlanger, one of the railroad's financiers, and that it was incorporated on November 13, 1888. The old train depot still stands and now houses an art center and studio.
The city sits where Lake Pontchartrain gives out, on the eastern edge of the Northshore near the Mississippi line. Next door is Honey Island Swamp, which St. Tammany's visitor bureau describes as pristine, primeval wilderness. Tour boats glide through it in 90 minute and two hour trips all year, and passengers come back talking about alligators, wild boars, raccoons, owls, egrets, herons and nutria.
Olde Towne is the historic center, with antique shops, the Slidell Museum and more than a dozen murals by local artists along Front, First, Carey and Cousin Streets. Bayou Bonfouca winds past the edge of town, and the cooking around here leans hard on Louisiana classics: soft shell crab benedict at breakfast, oysters broiled in spinach cream on a deck over the bayou, gumbo and jambalaya at the festivals.
Fishing the salty end of the lake
Lake Pontchartrain is not really a lake. Visit The Northshore explains that it is a brackish estuary of about 630 square miles, fed by Northshore rivers and bayous and tied to the Gulf through the Rigolets and Lake Borgne. It gets saltier the farther east you go, and Slidell is on that east end.
More than a dozen fishing charters run out of Slidell after big speckled trout, bull redfish and tripletail, and the St. Tammany Parish Fishing Pier gives anglers without a boat a way onto the water. The parish says fall is when trout on the lake are easiest to catch. Fall is also when hunters start clearing freezer space, which is how Slidell ended up with a cook-off where wild game shares the tables with seafood and barbecue.
