Jim Bradshaw: A long, hard journey by steamboat

In the middle 1800s, most of the handful of steamboats that ventured onto the Vermilion River, went no further than Perry’s Bridge, partly because there wasn’t much profit in going any further, and partly because fallen trees and other obstacles made the river all but impassable beyond the bridge.

Just getting to that little community three miles south of Abbeville wasn’t all that easy.
A correspondent to the New Orleans Crescent in 1851, who signed his letter only with the initial “M,” wrote that “to reach this part of the world [at that time, from New
Orleans], one must travel much further than at others.”

The usual steamboat route in those days was up the Mississippi from New Orleans to Plaquemine, through Bayou Plaquemine to the Atchafalaya, down the Atchafalaya to the Gulf, then along the coast to Vermilion Bay and the river.

That was the short way, and it could be used only when water in Bayou Plaquemine was deep enough to float a boat.

“Should the Plaquemine be low,” the correspondent wrote, a traveler  “must go to the mouth of the Red River and come down the Atchafalaya. From this he enters Lake Chicot (Stumpy Lake). This, I think is about seven miles long and two or three wide.

"A beautiful pass connects this with Grand Lake, a splendid sheet of water, forty miles in length, and in some places, it is said to be ten miles wide. Had it high banks, it would be unsurpassed in beauty by any lake in the South.”

Lake Chicot acquired the nickname Stumpy Lake because, as a navigator later wrote, “Steamboats on this route are frequently stuck in … Lake Chicot, and have to be lighted off after tedious delays and much perplexity, and the navigation throughout is … difficult and dangerous. Boats are frequently snagged and ruined … which has caused insurance on steamers in this trade to be very high.”

A steamer went from Grand Lake back into the Atchafalaya, passed through Wax Bay near Belle Isle into Atchafalaya Bay, then went “through Morrison’s Cut-off into Cote Blanche Bay, thence into Vermilion Bay and Vermilion River, and, after traveling about thirty miles, he would reach this place.”

At the time of the correspondence, only one steamboat, the Flora, made the trip with any regularity. It was advertised in the New Orleans papers as a “superior, swift running, passenger packet,”  but it wasn’t very big.

The letter writer said William Jenkins, master of the boat, sometimes had to refuse sugar and other cargo.

Most cotton growers, he said, hauled their bales overland to St. Martinville to be shipped down the Teche to New Orleans.

Ten families lived at Perry’s Bridge at the time, most of them American, the writer said, and “Yankee enterprise will soon make it a flourishing town.”

He may have undercounted the number of families, or, as he predicted, it took off in a hurry. According to an official plat recorded in 1853 by A.D. Minor, U.S. deputy surveyor, Perry’s Bridge then had three stores, a bakery, a blacksmith shop, a school, a Methodist church, one doctor, one lawyer, and a cemetery.

 “A woodland lies on the [Vermilion River] banks, while on either side, far away, extends a vast prairie,” according to the newspaper description.

“Here and there, in the distance, you see islands of wood. These are the only shelters one finds from the bitter cold winds which sweep over the prairies. Over these prairies are an innumerable number of ponds, some quite large. Last fall the drought was so severe that these were all dried up and the cattle had to come to the river for water.”

Vermilionville (now Lafayette) was about 25 miles upriver from Perry’s Bridge, but was centered around the courthouse and church, which were two miles back from the waterway.
Because of that, “M” thought, the town had a limited future. “It is doubtful whether it will attain to any distinction,” he wrote.

He believed a “growing little settlement called Pin Hook [on the river]… will some day excel Vermilionville in size, population, etc.”

“M” also thought little of the future of “the just-founded settlement called Abbeville” midway between Perry’s Bridge and Vermilionville.

The best thing he had to say about it was that it had some pretty magnolia trees.

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