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Walking around Morgan City will become a more pleasant experience thanks to two sources of funding on which the City Council took action at the July 26 meeting.

The larger of the two items is a $930,000 award from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.

The money comes from the DOTD’s Safe Routes to Public Place program.

The money will go to build and improve sidewalks from Front Street to the South Louisiana Community College Young Memorial Campus.

While the state money will pay for the bulk of the work, the city government will be responsible for expenses including right of way acquisition and what the state calls “non-infrastructure improvements.”

The Morgan City Council passed a resolution authorizing Mayor Lee Dragna to accept the grant and enter an agreement with the DOTD for the project on the city’s behalf.

Also July 26, the council passed a resolution authorizing Dragna to accept a $3,500 grant from the Atchafalaya National Heritage Area toward giving Morgan City a place in a historic walking tour app.

The app would work with kiosks around the city. Tour-takers could use their mobile devices to learn about historic Morgan City locations at each kiosk.

Also at the July 26 meeting, Gerard Bourgeois, the attorney for the Morgan City Harbor and Terminal District, asked the council to consider an ordinance that would require boats to be moved out of the way when necessary to accommodate dredging.

Port of Morgan City struggled for at least six years to persuade federal officials to provide enough funding to dredge the port’s channel to its authorized dimension.

For the last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has financed an unprecedented level of dredging from Morgan City to the Gulf. In April, officials held a ribbon-cutting to symbolize the opening of the port’s channel to something like its authorized dimensions of 400 feet wide and 20 feet deep.

The hope is that the channel will attract large import-export vessels to Morgan City for unloading to truck or rail transportation.

But boats tied up in areas such as the Morgan City wharf can delay dredge vessels that can cost $50,000 an hour.

The port board has already passed an ordinance requiring boats to be moved for dredging. But “the port doesn’t have police,” Bourgeois said.

ANNIVERSARY
New Salem Baptist Church, 1412 Cherry St., Patterson, celebrating its choir’s nine-year anniversary at 9:30 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 14. Soloist, choirs, groups and dance teams are invited to attend.

The steamboat opened the bayous of south Louisiana and helped bring prosperity to the communities alongside them, but by the middle 1800s the romance of a ride on a steamer and the convenience of shipping crops on them began to be challenged by pragmatic leaders who argued for the speed and dependability of the railroad.

The editor of The Planters’ Banner, one of the best read newspapers in the Attakapas district in 1850, plainly thought it was time for businessmen to push for a railroad through the area.

In those days, boats followed two principal routes from New Orleans to St. Martinville. The “inner route” followed inland waterways — Bayou Plaquemine, the Atchafalaya River, Bayou Teche — but only during the months when the water was high. The rest of the year boats had to take an “outer route” through the shallow waters of the Gulf — something not all of them were equipped to handle.

The editor thought there had to be a better way, asking rhetorically in January 1850, “Do our enterprising and public spirited citizens believe that we shall, for a century to come, be obliged to take the circuitous route which our steamboats now take? How stupid is the idea that [our] citizens … will continue to … travel more than two hundred miles during three months of the year to reach New Orleans, and more than four hundred miles the balance of the year?”

The editor reminded his readers that the trip was not only unnecessarily long, but that it was filled with dangers. Sunken stumps and logs were “rendering navigation more and more difficult,” he argued. “The navigation of Bayou Plaquemine is difficult and dangerous and the Atchafalaya is little … better.
Steamboats of ordinary capacity are constantly liable to delays … and accidents.

“Something must be done to improve the mode of communication between Attakapas and the city, or navigation will before many years become so difficult as to cause depreciation in the value of property throughout this section. … the Teche itself is filling up, and we have the choice either to permit our great thoroughfares to be choked up … or to establish a railroad between this country and the city, which will defy all the snags … and will be for us a permanent highway for ages to come, by which we can fly to New Orleans in six hours.”

The editor realized that his idea was not going to find favor with every reader. He said he expected his suggestion “to meet with about as many dry land snags as our steamboats do with fresh water snags,” and compared opponents of his plan to “a gnarled tree that will make a first rate snag when it would hardly answer for any other purpose under heaven.”

But the problem of stubborn citizens paled in comparison to the two biggest issues: politics, and money. To begin with, in 1850, the Louisiana constitution did not allow organization of the types of corporations needed to raise the cash to build a railroad — something the steamboat people wanted to keep. That was changed in 1853, over boatmen’s objections, when a new constitution was adopted.

The New Orleans, Opelousas, and Great Western Railroad was chartered right after the new constitution was adopted, but it wasn’t until 1857 that a line was completed from Algiers (across the Mississippi River from New Orleans) to Brashear City (Morgan City). The plan was to extend the line all the way to
Texas, but no further construction had been done when the Civil War erupted.

The war not only disrupted the extension, it also destroyed much of the line that had been built. It took a lot of money to rebuild that first part and even more to continue it to the Sabine.

Regular rail service didn’t reach the Teche country until 1880, three decades after the newspaper’s call for “a practical mode by which the citizens of Attakapas will ever be able to reach New Orleans.”

Some of the steamboats held on for a decade or more after that, but time is money and the ability to “fly” across the rails to New Orleans finally did them in.

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

Grapes are one of the oldest and most extensively cultivated food crops in the world. The earliest archaeological evidence of the domesticated grape comes from an area between the Black Sea and Iran. Cultivated varieties were spread by humans through southern Greece to the Mediterranean region and on to Europe and the Americas.
Grapes are typically consumed as fresh fruit, wine and dried as raisins. Every year, 7.2 trillion gallons of wine are produced worldwide, and 800,000 tons of raisins are produced using 3.2 million tons of grapes. Fresh grapes account for less than 12% of the world’s total grape production.
In the United States, the grape industry contributes about $125 billion annually to the economy, and the average American eats about 8 pounds of grapes each year.
Grapes are an excellent source of vitamins C and K, dietary fiber and minerals. In addition, grapes are high in a substance called resveratrol — a polyphenol that can provide powerful antioxidants, protecting the body against damage by free radicals associated with disease.
Grapes belong to the Vitaceae family, which contains 11 genera of 600 different species. The genus Vitus is the only food-bearing genus in the Vitaceae family and contains about 60 different species. Grapes are grouped into one of four different categories: European grapes (Vitis vinifera), French-American hybrids, native grapes and muscadine grapes (Vitis rotundifolia).
Native grapes were found in North America by the first European settlers and are prized for their cold hardiness and disease resistance. Muscadine grapes are what Louisianans are most familiar with, as they are native to the Gulf States and are profuse native growers here. Muscadines have a bold, musky flavor and large seeds.
Botanically speaking, grapes are berries. They can live up to hundreds of years, with the most productivity occurring in the first 50. The oldest grapevine in America, a 400-year-old muscadine vine, is in North Carolina. Grapes have the ability to tolerate a wide range of soils.
Muscadines are the perfect grape of the South. Wild muscadines are dioecious with male and female flowers on separate vines, meaning you need a male and female vine to produce fruit for wild muscadines. However, there are self-fertile vines. Examples of self-fruitful muscadines (you only need to plant one vine of these for fruit) are Carlos, Cowart and Magnolia. Some other commonly carried grape varieties are Niagara, Mars and Concord.
Muscadines are predominantly dark skinned, growing in clusters of three to 10 berries. Fruit ripens in August and September. Up to 120 days are needed for fruit to mature, with some varieties ripening earlier than others. Improved muscadine varieties are available through local and online plant nurseries.
Muscadines are relatively disease free. When properly fertilized and managed, vines grow vigorously, so moderate insect and disease damage usually does not affect the plant.
Muscadines are resistant to a devastating grape disease called Pierce’s disease. Most European-type grapes grown in southeastern U.S. inevitably succumb to this disease, and many times, the disease kills the vines before they can even make grapes. Muscadine grapes have a thicker, tougher skin than most table and wine grape cultivars.
If you want to plant your own muscadines, select a site with full sun or a minimum of six to eight hours of sun a day. The vines also will need well-drained, slightly acidic soils (5.5 to 6.5 pH) as well as a trellis for support. Muscadine plants can be purchased as bare-root plants; this is often how they come when bought from online sources. Bare-root plants are typically planted in January and February. These usually do not have foliage and will leaf out in the spring when the weather warms.
Local plant nurseries usually have recommended muscadine plants growing in 1- or 2-gallon containers with foliage on the vines. Vines grown in containers can be planted all through the growing season. Use a 15-to-20-foot spacing between vines to allow for horizontal vine growth on trellis. Single and double wire systems are very common and are placed 5 to 6 feet up from the ground.
Fertilize vines in the spring after growth starts with a complete fertilizer at a rate of 4 ounces the first year, 6 ounces the second and 1.5 pounds per vine the third year. Established vines should receive 2.5 to 4.5 pounds each year thereafter.
Annual pruning is required for optimal fruit production. Prune while dormant between mid-January and early March. Fruit forms on new growth from buds on the previous season’s growth. When pruning, keep a 6-inch spacing between the spurs along the cordon. The previous season’s growth will be pruned back, leaving a spur with two to four buds. New growth from these buds will be the fruiting wood. You will repeat this process of pruning back last season’s growth to spurs with two to four buds each year.