Jim Bradshaw: Does treasure hide beneath La. rice fields?
Fabacher Road, which runs west for several miles from La. 91 near Iota is one of the few reminders of the settlement founded in 1871 by the man some claim to be the pioneer of the modern rice industry.
Little remains to mark just where the Fabacher community was, which will make it difficult if you want to look for the fortune supposedly buried there.
The monstrous ghost guarding it may also cause a problem.
In 1871 Franz Fabacher, his wife Magdelena Frey, and their six children, along with Zeno Huber and about 60 other Germans, moved to a stretch of land said to be of little value on Prairie Faquetaique.
Rice farmers at that time grew what was called “Providence rice,” because they planted the crop and let Providence provide.
The colonists who settled Fabacher’s so-called “German Colony,” decided to give Providence a hand by building reservoirs to collect rain water that could be used to irrigate the crops.
That was the beginning of rice culture as we know it in south Louisiana, but either Franz Fabacher didn’t capitalize on it, or maybe he just didn’t like farming.
He sold all of his property and moved back to New Orleans in 1878, taking his 19 -year-old son Joseph with him. But Joseph liked the prairie life and — according to one account — kept running away from New Orleans, until his father finally allowed him to move back to the prairie.
It was apparently a good idea. The St. Landry Democrat of Sept. 18, 1880 reported:
“At the lower end of Faquetaïque Prairie, at what is usually called ‘German Settlement’ the land has always been considered completely worthless. But this year about 4,600 barrels of rice will be produced in that neighborhood and within a very small compass, not extending up the prairie which is quite narrow here — not more than three or four miles.
"This rice in the 'rough’ will net about four dollars per barrel. So we have here a small neighborhood where they used to produce absolutely nothing for sale, a revenue of $16,000.
"The rice lands in this neighborhood … once considered not only worthless but a nuisance, are now the most valuable: and it will not be long before they cannot be bought for any reasonable price.” Sixteen thousand 1880 dollars would be about a half-million today.
Two years later, in 1882, Joseph Fabacher became the first farmer to grow what is known as “upland rice,” irrigated by rain water reservoirs.
That year’s crop turned a good profit, and Fabacher used the money to add 162 acres to his farm. It would eventually grow to more than 600 acres.
In 1885, Fabacher was the first to drill a deep water well to irrigate his crop.
That also proved successful and by 1893 he had three wells that could bring up fresh water 24 hours a day to be sent into the fields by a series of canals.
When the Midland-Eunice Railroad was completed in 1894, Fabacher built a warehouse next to the railroad tracks and opened a rice storage and shipping business, sending the local crop to be milled in Eunice and Crowley and sold around the world.
He made a lot of money, but the old story doesn’t say whether he was the one who buried the fabled fortune.
It could have been one of his neighbors, and it might even have been pirates who roamed across the prairies from time to time.
An 1896 newspaper tells the tale:
“Searchers for a supposed hidden treasure have been operating in the wood of this vicinity lately with supernatural results. This is the story of one of them, a well-known citizen. He began to dig hard by a massive oak tree at a spot where his secret information led him to expect a rich reward, when lo! and behold, the tree, notwithstanding there was no breath of air, began to vibrate until its topmost branches touched the ground compelling the man to retreat.
“While pondering over this strange phenomenon and trying to reconcile it to natural philosophy, with awful dismay he saw approaching him a hideous, uncouth monster of an unknown species and gigantic proportions, with blazing eyes and foamy mouth ready to devour him.
"The presence of mind of our worthy citizen did not forsake him, however, nor did his pedal extremities.”
He ran like the wind that was shaking the trees, never to return and never to divulge his “secret information.”
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.