Jim Bradshaw: Last Island was a paradise. Then the storm hit

Isle Dernière, the  barrier reef more commonly called Last Island, is best known for the deadly storm that struck there in August 1856.
But three years before that infamous storm, the Houma Ceres called it “the greatest place in the world to ride, swim, drink, dance, and talk love to the ladies.”
It’s only drawback, the Ceres said, was that there was no variety in island meals: “No vegetables — no meat  — no nothing — except sempiternal and never-varying fish and oysters — oysters and fish.”
When that was written, the island south of the Terrebonne Parish was roughly 25 miles long and one mile wide.
Today its remnants make up a series of smaller islands more correctly called Isles Dernieres, which is plural.
Some fishermen lived there in the 1850s, providing the unvarying fare for the fashionable who flocked to the island each summer to get away from the sweltering heat and yellow fever outbreaks in New Orleans.
It was a pleasant place to go, and new amenities made it even more pleasant.
A writer identified only as “Traveler” wrote a series of letters to the (Franklin) Planters’ Banner describing a trip to the little island in the summer of 1850. He saw a great future for the growing resort, and took a more benevolent view of its limited menu.
The island’s “fine harbor for small or light draught vessels, accessibility, the inexhaustible abundance of the finest fish and oysters, unrivaled bathing and pure, salubrious atmosphere, must possess advantages equal, if not superior, to any other watering place on our coast,” Traveler wrote.
It took him several days to get there, sailing down the Teche from Patterson and crossing Atchafalaya Bay before reaching the “picturesque and imposing” Last Island harbor, but it was worth the trip.        
“At the time we arrived some seven or eight vessels were in port, with flags streaming in the morning breeze, which, together with the cottages recently erected … between the landing and sea beach, presented a fine appearance,” according to the account.
Although the island’s early settlement was “involved in obscurity,” Traveler said, “[it is] certain … that for half a century back [c.1850] it has been a place of rendezvous and temporary camping ground for fishermen, turtle and terrapin hunters.”
Traveler particularly praised Capt. D. R. Muggah, who “at heavy expense and much inconvenience [was] erecting neat and commodious buildings for visitors.” Muggah had opened a hotel by 1850, “under the care of  Mr. Henry Buttrick and lady, where he serves up, to the satisfaction of every piscatorial epicure, all the luxuries of the sea.”
Although Traveler also noted that the island diet came almost exclusively from “the luxuries of the sea” (fish and oysters, oysters and fish), he thought good cooking made up for the limitations. 
In Traveler’s view, Mr. and Mrs. John Baptiste, who “resided upon the island for many years” had “acquired an art and dexterity in cooking fish, turtle, &c, that cannot be excelled,”
The Ceres noted in the summer of 1853 that “ Mrs. Pecot, so well known in this community, has taken charge of  [Muggah’s] Last Island hotel. …  The buildings have been greatly enlarged and improved, and are now capable of entertaining comfortably 80 to 100 guests.”
Besides offering accommodations, Captain Muggah provided transportation to the island aboard the steamer “Star,” leaving each Friday from Houma.
“Passengers from … New Orleans will find it to their advantage to travel this way,” the Houma newspaper suggested.
One of those passengers offered another description printed in the Ceres almost exactly a year before the devastating hurricane that changed the island forever.
“Standing at sunset on its beautiful beach …  your brow fanned by the cooled and invigorating expirations breathed from the lips of Aeolus [mythical Greek god who ruled the winds] — the mind becomes … romantic. …  The intonations … of the [sea] surge seem to laugh for a moment at the folly of reckless adventurers, then to chant songs of applause at their success, or sigh a sad requiem at their misfortunes.”
The applause forever gave way to the sad requiem on August 10, 1856, when, as New Orleans novelist Lafcadio Hearn wrote, “the Gulf of Mexico reared up and devoured [the island] pretty much whole, with most of its inhabitants and wealthy vacationers. There were a few survivors. … Nearly all who saw the water rise up through the floor of the island’s grand hotel did not live to see the water recede. A few seconds after the sea reached up through the floorboards, the structure — along with every other one on the island — collapsed, taking at least two hundred people with it.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.