Jim Bradshaw: Registrar blew the whistle on grand canal plan

It was a pretty straightforward deal when the Legislature passed Act 52 in April 1865 to allow the Louisiana and Texas Canal Co. to build a steamboat channel from Vermilion Bay to the Sabine River.

The company said it wanted to build a canal from the western edge of the bay to someplace on the Sabine near the mouth of the Neches River “by the most direct and available route.”

It argued that “this great inland Steamboat Canal will be of incalculable benefit to New Orleans.

"It will open up direct water communication with a large extent of country which is but little known to this community; it will bring the trade of that section to this market, which is now taken to Galveston. The cattle shipped to this port by the Morgan [Steamship] Line and by railway, will all be brought through this Canal, as the Company can afford to bring them at greatly reduced prices. The lumber trade from Sabine, Calcasieu and Mermenton  [sic] rivers will, in part, be brought through this Canal, to the Prairie country in this State and the Teche, the coast and this city.”

The company’s arguments are included in a little pamphlet with a long name: “A Statement of the Rights, Franchises And Advantages of the Louisiana and Texas Canal Company, Together with the Charter, The Facts Pertaining to the Litigation Connected Therewith, and Map of Land Grant and Route of Canal. [with] Map Representing the Location of “Louisiana and Texas Canal.” (New Orleans: Louisiana and Texas Canal Co., 1871).

The Legislature bought the argument, at first.

It soured on the deal when it began to appear that there was a big change in plans, or that  a big fraud was afoot. The claim of fraud came loudest from Ad. Dupre, the registrar of state lands, particularly in his report to the Legislature in 1866.    

He said the canal company was buying up nearly 5 million acres of the best land in southwest Louisiana, claiming that it was all needed to build the canal.

The legislation allowed the company to pay only 25 cents an acre for state land, but Dupre was convinced that at least 150,000 acres in Calcasieu Parish were worth at least $1.25 an acre.

He also claimed that the land involved included “the most valuable mineral lands in the state.”

Dupre used one word to describe, the deal: “Preposterous.” He said the company bought land extending 20 miles north of the “most direct route,” and that it included “all of the lands south of the pretended line of route.”

He claimed the canal company had “completely disregarded” the original plan and intended to “cut only about twenty-four miles of canal in traversing … about one hundred and eighty-six miles of country.”

That, he said, made the distance of the “imaginary canal, by a circuitous route, some ninety miles longer than even the unconstitutional act contemplated.”

He charged that the route kept changing simply to allow the company to buy up valuable land.

Dupre’s objections found a receptive audience. The New Orleans Picayune reported in January 1866 that the legislature had introduced a bill to repeal Act 52, which was duly passed.

As expected, the canal company went to court.

The unexpected part was that it won its  case. 

Judge Henry C. Dibble ruled that Act 52 was “however wise or unwise, a valid law, and formed a contract … whose obligation could not be impaired by subsequent statute.”

The canal company seems to have gone right to work on something close to its original land, apparently with the blessing of at least some of the local citizenry.

A report in the Lake Charles Echo in June 1871 said the company, having won its “protracted lawsuit, was “going vigorously to work  ... to push a canal from Schooner Bay [in Vermilion Parish] … to White Lake” that would provide “inside steamboat navigation all the way from Lake Arthur and Grand Chenier to Berwick Bay.”

The canal, the news account said, would open “a vast amount” of land in Cameron and Vermilion parishes to commerce, which was a great blessing upon “a rich but isolated region.”

Unfortunately, it seems to have been a short-lived blessing.

The company apparently went out of business quickly and the state reclaimed its land — certainly by 1883, when the much more successful visionary J. B. Watkins  bought a huge parcel of prairie and marsh land from the state, including just about all of what the Louisiana and Texas Canal Co. once claimed.

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