[citation needed] Under ownership of Spain, the city of New Orleans held the strategically important location between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain.
[citation needed] The Carondelet Canal, which was completed in 1794, connected the Tremé section of New Orleans with Bayou St. John, giving shipping access to Lake Pontchartrain as an alternative route to the Gulf of Mexico.
[citation needed] The return of good harvests in Europe along, with the newly cleared and planted land in the Midwest and Mississippi River Valley and improvements in transportation, resulted in a collapse in agricultural prices that caused the 1818–19 depression.
[14] Until the development of the steamboat, transportation of goods on major rivers was generally accomplished either with barges or flatboats, floated downstream or pushed upstream with poles or by hand using overhanging tree limbs.
It was during the period of expanding steam transportation that plantation agriculture dominated the Southern economy, with two-thirds of the millionaires in the U.S. living in Louisiana, mostly between Natchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans.
The surviving plantation homes range from relatively modest dwellings to opulent mansions, some containing original furnishings and many with period furniture.
[citation needed] Due to poor transportation and slow industrialization, plantations tended to be somewhat self-sufficient, growing most of their own food, harvesting their own timber and firewood, repairing farm implements, and constructing their own buildings.