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Jim Bradshaw: Looking for the town that never was

It created a mystery and a good bit of fun when a crew from the state highway department showed up in downtown Crowley in early August 1948 to put up a sign reading “Dura 4 miles.”
The arrow on the sign pointed to the east, which seemed to place the town midway between Crowley and Rayne.
That caused some head scratching since nobody had heard of Dura until the sign went up.
Alden Sonnier, for example, wrote in his “Acadiana” column in the Aug. 12 edition of the Rayne Weekly Acadian, “We have been living here 34 of our 35 years and did not know there was a place called Dura.”
It didn’t show up on the latest state maps, post office officials didn’t know anything about it, nor did the Southern Pacific railroad, and nobody driving down U.S. 90 could find even a trace of the place.
Sonnier’s readers offered some clues. One found a telephone exchange map that showed Dura “about a quarter-mile north of the overpass” between Crowley and Rayne.
Another found it on a map of Acadia Parish printed by the federal Public Roads Administration in 1941. But there was still nothing to show that a town had actually existed there.
That prompted Red Mitchell, city editor of the Crowley Post-Signal to write to the highway department to ask about the sign and the town. I. L. Thomas Jr., a traffic and planning engineer, wrote back:
“I can easily imagine the excitement caused by the discovery of an entirely new town by the Department.”
He said the sign was a mistake. There was no Dura.
The Weekly Acadian headline a few days later, “Hapless Dura Dealt Death Blow By Louisiana Highway Officials.”
“The city of the future is no more and the road signs which have dotted Highway 90 have been removed. … Dura has been eliminated from the earth … [with] a stroke of a pen and an order from state [highway] headquarters,” the newspaper reported.
“A certain amount of sadness is attached to the passing. … Knots of citizens in the cities and towns of Acadia Parish have enjoyed pondering over its past or future as the case may have been. Jokes were made about Dura.
“The day [of] the … order … a report was received that the rice in Dura had been combined. The proprietor of a nearby tavern announced to his patrons he was seeking office as Dura’s mayor. … Parish newspapers were said to be planning to hire Dura correspondents.”
The Post-Signal commented, “That appears to be that. And we can’t say that we’re glad. We were beginning to like Dura. … We can see its busy commercial and industrial section, buzzing with activity. … We can see children playing along its tree-lined streets. … Dura could be quite a place.”
It eventually emerged that a community named Dura had been discussed by planners during a burst of home building after GIs came home to settle after World War II.
It never got beyond the talking stage, but Sonnier was probably not alone in the sentiment expressed in his column:
“But the thought of it will haunt us. Never again will we be able to drive more than half-way to Rayne without wondering whether or not we have passed or are passing through the main street of Dura.”

A long-standing error
I have been one of those who perpetuated the erroneous account that the name Acadiana was used first in 1963 after a New York typist added an extra “a” to an invoice sent to Lafayette’s Acadian Television Corp., which used it to describe the KATC viewing area.
That was probably its first use to describe a geographical area, but the word “Acadiana” was used at least as early as 1946 in the Crowley Post-Signal as a reference to the body of south Louisiana folklore, and then by Red Mitchell and Alden Sonnier as the name of a column appearing in the Post Signal and the Rayne Weekly Acadian.
They used it in the sense of “things pertaining to Acadia Parish.”
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

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