Jim Bradshaw: Engineer saw south Louisiana as place of grandeur

Civil engineer B.H. Payne was hired in 1851 to study the possibilities of building a railroad from New Orleans into south Louisiana.

He had never crossed the Mississippi River until then, but fell in love with what he saw once he did.

“Outside of the State of Kentucky, so beautiful a country I have never seen as is this whole line, and I was filled with astonishment at finding such a region in the State of Louisiana,” he reported.

He presumed that few people knew about the beautiful place because it was hard to get to, “completely cut off, as it is, from direct communication with the Mississippi river and New Orleans by swamps, trembling prairies, lakes and tortuous bayous.”

His observations, published in a little pamphlet, “Report on the Algiers and Opelousas Railroad,” provided the basis for the line that was built from the west bank of the Mississippi to Morgan City before the company ran out of money just before the Civil War.

Charles Morgan bought the remnants of the line after the war and eventually extended it across Louisiana.

Payne began his investigation at Washington, “on the west bank of the Courtableau, on a beautiful plateau of land,” and traveled through Opelousas, Grand Coteau, Vermilionville (Lafayette), St. Martinville, New Iberia, Franklin, Centerville and Patterson, stopping at Berwick Bay.       

Besides being pretty, he said, the section’s “southern exposure to the sea breeze” made it “perhaps the most healthy portion of the American continent.”
As proof of that, he reported that “by the census of 1840, it appears there are more centenarians in this particular section than in any other [entire] State in the Union.”           

“This land generally is what may be called rolling prairie, interspersed in many parts with timber,” he wrote. “All the water courses are densely timbered. The land, though described as rolling, is nevertheless what most persons would say is strictly level country, and [every acre of it] may be cultivated.”

He said the fertile soil in south Louisiana  was “equal to that of the best lands of Louisiana.”

He was particularly enamored by the “Cote Gelly [sic] Hills” near St. Martinville, which, he recorded, “is said to be their very richest land, and to the eye it certainly presents the most magnificent scene man ever looked upon.”

His report showed no hesitation in recommending that the railroad should be built in south Louisiana, and went on to propose an even more ambitious plan.

“If unsurpassed health and fertility of soil be any elements on which to feed a railroad to fullness, and to which add its unsurpassed loveliness with so great a commercial mart as New Orleans for its terminus … this presents considerations to capitalists no where else equaled on this continent for safe investment of money,” he said.

Furthermore, the engineer saw in 1851 the potential for the proposed railroad to grow into the Southern Pacific line that it eventually became, albeit with fits and starts along the way.

Once the rails got to Opelousas, he said, they could easily turn west and head into Texas, and then there was no reason to stop there.

He argued that “grandeur, wealth, and prosperity” awaited, if only the railroad builders would “fix our eyes upon the Pacific, and never flag in our energies until this Algiers road reaches its surf-beaten shore.”

That vision became reality on Jan. 12, 1883, when silver spikes  connected the final pieces of rail joining the Southern Pacific tracks stretching east from Los Angeles to the tracks of the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railroad near Langley, Texas.

The Texas line connected at the Sabine to the railroad crossing the Louisiana prairies, which then connected to the line running through the scenic Teche country to Algiers.
Together they formed the second transcontinental railroad and the first one that wasn’t snowed under for half of the year.

Southern Pacific acquired the interconnected lines bit-by-bit to form a single company, and in its heyday did generate the “grandeur, wealth, and prosperity” foreseen in that little pamphlet prepared by B. H. Payne many years before.

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