The Pioneers of Calcasieu Parish,Louisiana
Contributed by Margaret Rentrop Moore


Source: Southwest Louisiana Biographical & Historical by William
Henry Perrin; published 1891 page 125-129.


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THE PIONEERS.-Under this head, The American thus moralizes on the settlement of
the country: "Let us call back a few years, and notice the settling up of our
country from the East westward to the Pacific, a distance of three
thousand miles. Comparatively speaking only a few years ago a few hardy pioneers
gathered in Western New York and in Pennsylvania and, bidding their neighbors
good-by, set out with their springless, rough wagons for the great beyond- Iowa
and Michigan. The distance was truly great, the trail they traveled rough, and
the good-by forever, so far as this world was concerned. The great city of
Chicago was not in their way with her million of inhabitants. They may
have passed over the public domain where this great city now rests without
driving down I stake, hunting for a more desirable spot. They dotted
down here and there in the great prairie region before reaching the Missouri
and in the Michigan timber, but the great American Desert reaching out
beyond, where Kansas and Nebraska now stand as States, was regarded as
risky for settlement, a great waste of country, fit only for wild tribes of
Indians and the buffalo.
    
Look at it later on. Within the age of a man we see this trackless region
settled up, great cities built, and the east and west brought together almost as
neighbors by the building of great railroad lines. We have but to reflect a
moment to see how rapidly this has been done. Only thirty-five years ago
Davenport and Iowa City was tied together by rail, and, if we are correctly
informed, this was the first iron track laid west of the great Mississippi
River. During this time, in the South the movement was from South Carolina and
Virginia, westward, but the progress was not so rapid for two reasons. First,
the system of slave labor operated against it; second, the foreign   
immigration constantly pouring into the country through New York City read the
words on every hand,  Go West' and they went. Now, everything is turned, and the
 Go West,' which rang into the ears of the immigrant for so many  years, has
been changed to  Go South.'  The eyes of the world to-day are on the South.
Figures which we have given from time to time and have been published in all the
leading journals of the land testify that the capitalists have found out the
true value of the South and have already invested largely in lands and various
enterprises.  Immigration has turned southward, and the north and south railroad
lines are hurrying through for their accommodation. The work of settling up the
South has rapidly started. The people north and south have been thrown together
in business. The social relation developed, marrying and intermarrying, and
these ties making them more than ever one people."
    
     Judge G. A. Fournet thus congratulated the parish and the town of Lake
Charles, upon their rapid strides toward prosperity, in a speech made on the
28th of October, 1890 at the laying of the corner stone of the new court house
in Lake Charles: "There can be no fitter occasion than the present to recall the
changes that have brought about the necessity of erecting the new court house.,
the corner stone of which is now being laid. Without having recourse to
statistics, I will simply state that within the life and recollection of the
youngest among you, the population of the parish of Calcasieu was the smallest
in the State of Louisiana.  Although the largest in territory, it was the last
opened to settlement. Its immense prairies, traveled by no roadway, save here
and there the tracks of the huntsman and the stock-gatherer, had not yet been
startled by the shriek of the locomotive or the roar of the railroad train.
The tasseled corn, the rippling wave of the sugar cane and the loaded crests of
the mellow rice field were unknown from the Mermentau to the Sabine swamp. Our
wealth and timber the finest and the best in the world; pine unequaled in
usefulness and cypress unrivaled in durability, inviting the wants of mankind
and courting the industry of man, covered our virgin forests with giants of
their kind, from the 3oth parallel to the limits of Rapides and Vernon. Age,
winds and storms alone tumbled their giant frames, while the steel destined to
fell them laid as yet entombed in the bowels of the earth, undiscovered and
unforged."
    We had then neither cities nor incorporated towns. This very city, of which
you are all so proud, I am sure, which now rests so gracefully basking in the
glory of our own Southern sun, like a thing of beauty and of life," on the     
edge of this, the loveliest and most picturesque lake that ever greeted the eve
of man, was nothing but a mere hamlet.
    Jennings, Esterly, Welsh, Iowa City, Westlake, twin sister of Lake Charles,
Sulphur City, Edgerly, Vinton, Jacksonville, Crown Point and Lakeside, all
growing and promising towns, were not even on the maps, and had not yet drawn
the breath of activity and life. In a few short years the magic hand of progress
has accomplished the  wonderful transfiguration in the aspects of nature and
works of industry and art we contemplate to-day. We have now before us and
around us a bustling and prosperous young city, teeming with a busy population
of over four  thousand inhabitants of all classes and of all trades and
professions. Thriving towns, with the bright and comfortable residences and
business houses, fill places where only two or three years since there was
nothing but the wilderness of uncurbed nature, unbroken and untrained to meet
the wants and bend itself to the commands of civilized society.
    Numberless farms now dot the landscape where there was no object within the
scope of vision in the measureless waste, except the flowering immensity of the
prairie meeting with the boundless azure of the sky in the distant horizon.
Hither have come the sturdy yeomen from the South, fleeing from overflows and
the competition of an inferior race, and hither have come the farmers from the
Northwest, driven from their inhospitable plains by the scorching drought of
summer and the snow-mantled blizzard of winter, to seek refuge in the solitude
of our prairies; and they have made our empty places smile with pleasant homes
and pregnant fields.