Along the River Road: Past and Present on Louisiana’s Historic Byway

Introduction

Introduction What exactly is the River Road? Polite confusion reigns when distinguishing between the better known federal designation, the Great River Road (GRR), and our River Road. The former is not the subject of this book; it is a federally designated land route first conceived by the Mississippi River Parkway Commission in 1938 to offer travelers a broad view of the historic and cultural significance of the Mississippi River Valley. The GRR roughly traces the Mississippi River along much of its meandering 2,350 miles, from its Minnesota source to the last point of solid land south of New Orleans. In south Louisiana, it now includes large portions of our River Road, although it formally follows other highways away from the river. “Our” River Road, as defined by this book, covers the approximately one hundred miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, through the parishes of St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, St. James, Ascension, Iberville , and bits of East and West Baton Rouge. (State tourism folks now define the complete River Road as following the Mississippi from the Louisiana-Arkansas border on the north to the last bit of highway at Venice , to the south.) My definition is, I admit, arbitrary. I did not include New Orleans or most of Baton Rouge, the state capital, because they have each been the subject of so much excellent writing. I focus instead on the area from just above (north) of New Orleans upriver into East and West Baton Rouge parishes. The River Road can be best appreciated as a cultural parkway, a pair of undistinguished rural routes—one on the east bank, one on the west—with the Mississippi River as its median, in which exists a fascinating aggregation of more than three hundred years of history, culture, tales, and lore. Layers of settlement by diverse peoples—Indian natives, French, xi xii  Introdcution Germans, black slaves from Africa and the West Indies, free people of color, Acadians, Spanish, Anglo-Americans, Italians, and many others— were deposited like geological strata and melded together, creating a distinct and unusual culture. One of the oddities of following the River Road on either bank—in addition to them being narrow and pocked with potholes, often devoid of lane-striping, and seldom straight—is the inconsistent, seemingly whimsical numbering system. Going upriver along the east-bank linear route, as you will do following the guide in this book, presents an almost continuous , levee-hugging hundred miles, with successive highway numbers that are: La. Highways 48, 628, 44, 942, 75, 141, and 327; its west-bank counterpart , heading downriver, is successively numbered La. 18, 20, 405, and 988. I found this not only confusing but may help explain why the River Road has an identity problem and has never been appreciated “en tout”— as a whole. Regardless of highway numbers, however, the River Road is, and always has been, defined by an intricate relationship with the river. The Mississippi was the reason for settlement; it linked and separated people, attracted and repelled them, provided a source of transportation, food, fuel, and irrigation, and served as an agent of change—including destruction and ruin. Today, thanks to the uniform levees, the river is less intrusive into the daily lives of River Road residents, but it is actually no less a force in the evolution of this place. I have lived most of my life along this legendary corridor and chafe at its presentation as a Deep South stereotype of an antebellum plantation parade. To be sure, the alluring nineteenth-century mansions open to the public are remarkable attractions, each one with an individual history and flavor of its own, worth a visit and return. Some offer overnight accommodations and restaurant facilities, all of which are delightful. But to reduce the River Road to the narrow definition of the antebellum South effectively transforms everything beyond the grand houses to mere extraneous detail and overlooks much of what makes the River Road unique. There is significance and charm to even the frame cottages with flapping walls and weathered boards at a tilt, old cypress cisterns shaded by massive cedars, shabby country stores and small, nameless river towns. It overlooks a site where green sweeps of cane hide colorful tales and where pocket swamps along the roadside indicate a historic crevasse Introduction  xiii site. In short, the River Road is a jambalaya landscape where the beautiful is jammed next...