Lincoln Beach amusement park, Amusement park site in New Orleans, United States

Lincoln Beach was an amusement park on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain near Little Woods in eastern New Orleans, built on land added to the lake by the Orleans Levee Board. It was a smaller version of the whites-only Pontchartrain Beach, with rides, games, restaurants, a swimming pool and lake swimming.

The land was deeded to the city by Sam Zemurray in 1938 and bought within a year by the Orleans Levee Board, which first set aside this lake section as a swimming area for black New Orleanians, then built out land in the lake for the park, opened in 1939. After Pontchartrain Beach was desegregated in 1964, the city stopped maintaining Lincoln Beach; it fell into disrepair and closed in 1965.

In its final decade, Fats Domino, Nat King Cole and The Neville Brothers performed at Lincoln Beach, which offered rides, games, restaurants, a swimming pool and lake swimming. The park was a smaller version of the whites-only Pontchartrain Beach, and its history is told in the 2012 Harvard University Press book The Land Was Ours.

The site lies on the Lake Pontchartrain shore near Little Woods, in the Eastern New Orleans part of the Ninth Ward, an area little developed in the 1930s. The Orleans Levee Board built out additional land in the lake for the park. The ruins have stood vacant for decades; in 2020 the artist Reggie Ford began cleaning the beach, and it is slated to reopen in early 2027.

The land was deeded to the city by Sam Zemurray in 1938 and bought within a year by the Orleans Levee Board, which first set aside this lake section as a swimming area for Black New Orleanians before building out additional land in the lake for the park. The ruins stayed vacant for decades; in 2020 the artist Reggie Ford began cleaning the beach, joined by others such as Sage Michael, and it is now used by the community, with several hundred visitors on an average weekend. Funding has been awarded and the site is slated to reopen to the public in early 2027, the first public shore access to Lake Pontchartrain on the New Orleans banks in over four decades.