Jim Bradshaw: Little communities were hidden in the Louisiana woods

By JIM BRADSHAW
 It’s a common assumption that towns began to spring up on south Louisiana prairies almost as soon as the last spike was driven to connect railroads linking New Orleans and Houston in 1880.
That line opened an important commercial route but wasn’t an overnight town builder. Even after the rails came through, most prairie communities were hidden away in places where water and firewood could be found.
W. W. Duson, who founded towns and developed hundreds of thousands of acres in southwest Louisiana, made the point in a speech in 1896 that the railroads were slow to begin supporting towns.
He said it seemed only natural that owners of the newly built railroad would want to generate depots for passengers and freight in the long stretch between the two big cities, but that wasn’t the case.
“The management of [the railroad] had no faith in this section of the state, and, in fact, no interest in its development,” he said.
The railroads were just catching on to the idea that towns and people could mean profit when New Orleans newspaperman M. B. Hillyard visited in 1886, six years after the railroad was finished.
He described open grasslands still populated mostly by cattle, but also “little communities, not quite towns, so well hidden in among the coves of trees along the few waterways that a stranger might not know they were there.”
Mostly Acadian communities were “thickly placed,” in those copses, “leaving the open prairie to the cattle and the newcomer,” he wrote.
“These people build no towns. … The ‘Cajiens’ love the streams, and a man might have ridden along [the] railroad a little while ago and thought there were no people in the country except where the road skirts a stream and thus reveals their homes. … In truth the woods are full of people. …
"There is a large population in the prairies of Louisiana, which no inexperienced traveler suspects … [and] is generally unseen.”
Hillyard came to the area because he wanted to see “a station named for Mr. Welsh,” one of the first towns built next to the rails. He described it in 1886 as “an older town than Jennings” built in “a beautiful little cove” with “quite a little trade.”
He counted five stores, a Catholic church, a school, and a blacksmith’s shop among its buildings. A Protestant church was “soon to be built.” Three doctors were among the 200 people who lived there.
Welsh was already one of those “little communities, not quite a town” and a stopping place for travelers well before the railroad was built.
Miles Welsh came to Louisiana from Pennsylvania looking for a mild climate that might alleviate his rheumatism.
He’d planned to go to Texas to raise cattle, but on the way, he and his family set up camp in the “beautiful little cove” and never left. Miles built a log home and claimed the land around it.
The family began to take in travelers following the Old Spanish Trail that ran close to their home, some of whom liked the place and settled nearby.
When the railroad began plotting its route, the oldest son, Henry Welsh, offered a free right-of-way through his land, with the condition that a depot was built and all passing trains had to stop there.
The railroad made a good investment in taking up Henry’s offer.
In 1885 trains carried 68 carloads of rough rice, 50 carloads of cattle, 30,000 pounds of wool, 680 boxes of eggs, and “some cotton” from the Welsh station.
There was only one concern about the town’s growth and prosperity.
The town was formed about the same time that J. B. Watkins organized the North American Land & Timber Co. and began to buy more than a million acres of wetland and prairie, including some around the little community.
 “It is hemmed in just now by Mr. Watkins’ purchase and sales to Norther speculators,” Hillyard wrote.
“Some restiveness is felt there, as it seems prejudicial to the expansion of the population, but it is supposed that Mr. Watkins will not shut down on the town like a vise.”
Watkins didn’t squeeze like a vise.
Historian and biographer William Henry Perrin described the town in 1891 as “a flourishing town … containing at present about three hundred inhabitants,” which was 100 more than Hillyard had counted just five years earlier.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

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