6 LIVING HERE 2021
FROM THE BEGINNING
In Houma-Thibodaux, we’re all about the bayous
By Bill Ellzey Correspondent The Mississippi River’s earliest explorers knew it branched off at present-day Donaldsonville. They called the smaller outlet La Fourche de los Chetimaches, or the fork of the Chitimacha Indians. The natives, early settlers and generations that followed used Bayou Lafourche to access the rich lands along its banks and establish communities and plantations. Road access was virtually impossible except on dirt tracks along the bayou banks or on ridges. The rest of the area was impassably swampy or marshy. Canoes, dugouts, skiffs and flatboats brought in goods and passengers, either from the Mississippi River to the north or from bayous connected with the Gulf of Mexico. Eventually, steamboats made scheduled runs between Thibodaux and New Orleans, but after railroads penetrated the low-lying interior about 1855, Bayou Lafourche was dammed off at Donaldsonville to end the threat of annual flooding. Bayou Terrebonne similarly forked off Bayou Lafourche at Thibodaux, but its connection was allowed to close off naturally because of the expense of keeping it clear of silt and open to navigation. Terrebonne is “good earth” in English, but the bayou was first named “Darbonne,” after an early settler. It was renamed “Terrebonne” by Henry Schuyler Thibodaux when the present parish of the same name was being carved out of the larger Lafourche territory. For generations, Bayou Lafourche and the highways that parallel it on either side have served as a long “main street,” stretching from one end of the parish to the other, with population, business and industry clustered close by. This land-use pattern is essential for the region, built from millennia of flood-borne silt. The highest land is nearest the bayous, which delivered the annual layers of earth. Highways and communities seeming to have no central bayou are deceptive. Most are on ridges
along the Chacahoula ridge, remain important highway routes. The Bourg-Larose Highway follows ancient ridges to connect Terrebonne with Lafourche. In “good earth” Terrebonne, where elevations are rarely more than 6 feet above sea level, a ridge may be evidenced more by its sturdy sandy soil than by discernible elevation. In the 1920s, the annual delivery of silty floodwater was cut off. The Mississippi’s repeated destructive flooding of settlements and agricultural lands spurred the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete the levee systems that still protect south Louisiana from annual overflows. Terrebonne and Lafourche’s bayous remain water routes to the Gulf of Mexico, with roads and and settlements as far down as the elevation permits. But these bayous, their ridges and the human development they support are threatened by coastal erosion, the result of natural forces on wetlands which have not been nourished by natural Mississippi A shrimp boat plies the waters of southern Terrebonne Parish. [THE COURIER AND flooding for three-quarters of a DAILY COMET/FILE] century. And the vast freshwater marshes have been further debiwhose bayous gradually filled in Bayou Black, were once distributa- litated by the entry of salt water and disappeared naturally or, later, ries of the silty Mississippi, when through canals cut for oilfield through agricultural practices. it was still permitted to overflow access. Terrebonne had several bayous, naturally every spring. Newcomers alike would do well smaller than Bayou Lafourche, Like neighboring Lafourche, all of to arm themselves with local or radiating from a slightly elevated Terrebonne was built, literally, by cellphone maps and take leisurecentral area on which early settlers ages of those soupy annual Missis- ly exploratory drives into remote built the town of Houma. Five main sippi overflows, spilling through and threatened sections of the bayous extend from Houma toward Bayou Lafourche into Bayou Terregion. That includes places like the Gulf, like fingers from a palm. rebonne and farther into smaller Donner or Bowie, where cypress Indian natives and the earliest sett- bayous, sometimes covering much sawmills once roared; Chauvin, lers used these sluggish streams for of the parish with several feet of where “down the bayou” isolation transportation. muddy water. kept Cajun French alive as a spoken Today, modern highways folWhen the waters receded, silt language long after French spealow the same ancient routes; most was left behind, and the elevation kers were assimilated elsewhere; construction, residential and busi- of the land beside the bayou was and Isle de Jean Charles and Dulac, ness, is along bayou corridors. higher, by fractions of an inch. The where remnants of coastal Indian Bayous give their names to comlargest particles settled nearest the populations have survived for gemunities clinging to their banks. streams, over time building sandy nerations. And there are also CocoSomeone whose mail is delivered ridges that remain the best founda- drie, Leeville and Fourchon, where through the Theriot post office is tions for roads and other construc- the highways give way to docks and likely to say he lives in Dularge, tion. boat launches that connect fisherone of Houma’s five bayous. The Older inland ridges, like Cotemen, commercial and sport, to the others, Terrebonne, Little Caillou, au and Chacahoula, have survived tremendous seafood resources the Grand Caillou, Pointe-aux-Chenes, long after the bayous that built area enjoys. Even locals can learn and others not usually considered them largely disappeared naturally. something by exploring the place among the five, like Bayou Blue and Coteau Road and Bull Run Road, we call home.
