Slidell is situated on the northeast shore of Lake Pontchartrain. In 1982, construction began on a new railroad that connects New Orleans to Cincinnati, Ohio through Meridian, Mississippi. One of the building camps for the railroad continued to expand and was eventually chartered as the city of Slidell.
The beginning of the U.S. space program in the 1960s made New Orleans thrive with activity. The opening of NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, the John C. Stennis Space Center, and a NASA computer center almost tripled the city’s population over just a decade.
