VOLUNTEERS COME TOGETHER TO SWEEP MUD AND SILT FROM FORT PIKE
NEW ORLEANS, La, 02-DEC-04 -- NASA and Lockheed Martin employees will join the Grace King High School ROTC and the Fort Pike Volunteer Fire Department from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, December 4 in shoveling mud and silt from the outer casemates (armored positions) at Fort Pike.
Recent storms deposited the mud and silt at the historic fort that was built nearly 200 years ago to defend New Orleans against British invasion from the Gulf of Mexico. If left unchecked, the mud and silt will aid in the fort’s deterioration.
Through the years, the brick and masonry fort designed by one of Napoleon’s engineers has been battered by winds, floods and fires, but Fort Pike has endured as a true Louisiana treasure.
Reporters and photographers are invited to the Fort Pike clean-up on U.S. Hwy 90 just south of the Rigolets Bridge. For more information, call Julie Hutzler, the Fort Pike manager, at 662-0295 or Lockheed Martin’s Gordon Dyer at 615-9800.
From New Orleans you can get to Fort Pike by taking Chef Highway (Hwy. 90). MapQuest recommends another route -- take I-10 across the Twin Spans to Exit 263 and turn right onto La. Hwy. 433. Go 6.5 miles to Hwy. 90 and turn right. Cross the Rigolets bridge and the fort is on your left.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems -- Michoud Operations designs and assembles large aluminum and composite structures such as the Space Shuttle External Tank for aerospace and other applications at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans
