Historic Land Use Study of a Portion of the Barataria Unit of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park

Swanson, Betsy

Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve protects the natural and cultural resources of Louisiana's Mississippi River Delta region. This report documents historic land use and identifies historic sites and features in that portion of the Barataria Unit of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park which lies east of Highway 45. The study area measures approximately two miles by one and one-quarter miles. It represents a relatively undisturbed example of an abandoned Mississippi River deltaic distributary, the Barataria-des Familles Distributary. It is composed of the old river's natural levees, filled channel with upland hardwood forest, cypress swamp beyond the backslope of the natural levee, and the old scour channel (Bayou des Familles). The entire geological feature is undergoing subsidence, and the vegetation reflects this process. The study attempts to detail the historic land uses, land ownerships, and the human alterations to the natural environment. The entire environment is, to some degree, man-altered. Chapter I discusses the historical reapportionment of the wilderness by man. Chapter II outlines French and early Spanish settlement. The earliest French land grant to the area including the study area was made in 1726. The grantee established a tobacco and cotton plantation on the land. By the early Spanish Period, the land surrounding and including the study area had been divided into a series of tracts. Chapter III relates the history of the Canary Islander settlement established along Bayou des Familles by the Spanish government in 1779. Several probable Spanish building sites have been located in the study area. The Chemin de Barataria/Camino Real de Barataria/Old Barataria Road, now used in part as a park trail, dates back at least to this period. Chapter IV treats settlement of the late Spanish Period, following the abandonment of the area by most of the Islenos because of floods. Several farms were located in the study area in the late eighteenth century. Chapter V concerns the early American Period, or the first half of the nineteenth century. Crossing French and Spanish grants held many of the properties in litigation during this period, however, a number of the tracts were inhabited. Sugarcane was first grown in the study area or nearby in the early 1800s. Chapter VI describes the Christmas Plantation, a sugar plantation established immediately after the Civil War. A number of features and sites associated with the Christmas Plantation were located during field surveys, including field ditches and furrows, roads, and building sites. Chapter VII, Plantation Backlands, describes properties east of the Christmas Plantation that remained wooded and were used for logging and livestock grazing. Chapter VIII lists and maps extant road beds and possible road beds of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the study area. Some of these roads are used as park trails, while others are overgrown by the forest. Chapter IX, the Paper Subdivision, describes an attempt to establish a housing subdivision on a portion of the study area, as well as other twentieth century uses to which the land was put. A principal feature of this period is the pecan orchard, planted when the subdivision was laid out in 1910. Chapter X gives the history of the Crown Point Oil Field which is in part located in the study area. The oil drill sites of the 1960s and 1970s are described and mapped. Because of the dense vegetation in the study area, many more cultural features may yet remain unlocated. The numerous sites and features discovered by this study suggest that a similar number may exist outside of the study area in other portions of the park unit.

Historic Land Use Study of a Portion of the Barataria Unit of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park

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