Yellow fever didn't negotiate, and New Orleans knew it. When summer brought the sickness, those who could afford passage crossed Lake Pontchartrain to the pine-shaded villages on the north shore, where artesian springs rose cold and uncontaminated from an aquifer more than 3,000 feet deep and over 2,000 years old. Abita Springs built itself around that flight — a nationally advertised health resort where the fragrant air earned the whole district the nickname "Ozone Belt." The railroad made it accessible; the fear made it essential. What survived the resort era, and the resort era's collapse, is still visible: 180 contributing buildings preserved in the historic district, a Victorian pavilion relocated from the 1884 New Orleans World's Fair that now anchors Main Street, and a brewery opened in 1986 drawing water from the same ancient aquifer that once promised the sick a cure.
