Caught Between Land and Sea: West End as a Maritime Lake Community on Lake Pontchartrain

West End has eluded traditional New Orleans history as academics have continued to view the city's history and maritime culture through the Mississippi River. This project looks at the development of West End using the Sintes family and its boatbuilding business as a case study on how generational businesses are affected by tourism, natural disasters, and urban development. This project has used oral histories of the Sintes family to tell their personal story of West End, this terraqueous gap filled with boats, crawfish boils, natural disasters, and human loss, and in doing so, preserved and recorded a part of West End's maritime lake culture that might otherwise be lost.