Navigating the river

By 1900, railroads were well established in south Louisiana -- so much so that some planters thought they were established too well, with a monopoly on transportation that meant they could charge just about anything they wanted to haul crops to market.

The railroads were welcomed when they first began to lay rails across the prairies and every chamber of commerce wanted the trains to come to their town. 

The Lafayette newspaper reported in March 1889, for example, "With the prospect of early completion of the Louisiana Central Railroad from Baton Rouge to [Lafayette], our Abbeville neighbors may begin to build hopes of getting railroad connections in the near future. A parish so fertile as Vermilion and offering such superior inducements for development cannot and will not be disregarded by the searching eye of capital. ... We have always had the conviction that Vermilion Bay will someday be a great seaport and be the terminal point of a great railway."

In July 1907, according to the newspapers, "The people of Abbeville held a mass meeting to listen to a proposition ... to give Abbeville a railroad directly north by way of Youngsville, Broussard, and Port Barre to Melville, where connection would be made with the Texas & Pacific." That connection, the railroad supporters said, "would put freight in St. Louis in 28 hours."

Steamboats were still working the lower Vermilion River then, though obstructions that had been allowed to accumulate  since the railroad reached Lafayette made it all but impossible for boats or barges to get that high up the river; almost everything shipped into or out of Lafayette traveled by rail.

But a report by an engineer in August 1907 found that boats landing at Abbeville were hauling a big variety of goods each year. The list gives a good idea of the commerce of the area. 

It included 7,000 bales of cotton, 80,000 bags of cottonseed, 25,000 sacks of rice, 15,000 tons of sugar cane, 200 barrels of sugar, 250 barrels of molasses, 200 head of cattle, 20,000 barrels of oysters, 750 cases of eggs, 10,000 bricks, 100,000 shingles, and 1,000 cypress logs, among other things.

But snags and obstructions continued to be a problem on the river above Abbeville, causing one newspaper to comment, "Some work on Bayou Vermilion is ... a great necessity.  ... The people of Vermilion Parish and along the bayou have no other outlet to market but that stream. ... The country is ... settled by small farmers who are self\0x2011sustaining and out of debt. As it is, the bayou being closed up at several places, these people have to haul their produce and freight from 2 to 15 miles to the Morgan Railroad, who, having no competition,  extort exorbitant rates. ... Whilst they only charge 40 cents per barrel for freight from New Orleans to Washington, La., they ... charge these people 80 cents for carrying the same barrel 25 miles less."

That's why the chambers of commerce in Abbeville and Lafayette again investigated in the spring of 1914 the possibility of organizing "a company to operate a steamboat line from Lafayette to Morgan City to New Orleans." If that could be done, the Lafayette chamber had a grand plan "to have a canal dug  from the bayou up to the city as near to the center as practicable."

The railroads, of course, didn't  like that plan and fought it tooth and nail, and there remained the growing and expensive problem of keeping the river clear of snags and dredged deep enough for a decent-sized steamboat to navigate.

The plan died an early death, but the idea of busy boat traffic on the Vermilion never completely went away.

As late as the 1970s, Lafayette chamber leaders discussed the possibility of making the river navigable for barges and towboats and creating an inland port in Lafayette.

 

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You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P. O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.