Shell Diggers, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana
Submitted to the USGenWeb Archives by Sandra McLellan, Nov. 2005
Special thanks to Jim Perrin for donating it to the archives.

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THE SHELL DIGGERS

BY JIM PERRIN, Local Historian

Rangia cuneata, small brackish water clams native to Lake Pontchartrain and 
neighboring waters have been an asset to generations of area residents.  The 
mollusks grow to about 3Ž4 of an inch across in two to three years and their flesh 
is said to be quite edible.  Although this writer can not verify the taste of 
these clams, generations of Indians who inhabited the Ponchatoula area for untold 
centuries ate them by the millions.  Yet it is for what the clams leave behind 
that they are best remembered today.  At their demise the Rangia clams leave a 
hinged shell that bleaches bright white in the sun.  These small white shells, in 
bulk quantities, provide excellent construction materials.

How these small clams came to benefit the local economy is a story thousands of 
years in the making.  The Gulf of Mexico, whose waves used to lap at the beaches 
just south of Ponchatoula, was gradually pushed away from our area when the 
Mississippi River again changed its course a few thousand years ago.  The river 
deposits of mud and silt gradually created the land where New Orleans and St. 
Bernard Parish are located and in the same process trapped part of the Gulf 
creating lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain.  The brackish water in the lakes 
created an ideal habitat for the Rangia clams.  Wave action over countless 
centuries washed up untold millions of the small shells and deposited them in 
banks along the shore line.  Many of these shell banks were later covered with 
soil as the coastline south of Ponchatoula changed, but other shell banks were 
left exposed for the use of the early settlers of Louisiana.

Louisiana colonists found that the clam shells made an excellent base for roads 
and walkways.  The shells weighed less than gravel and did not disappear beneath 
the soft Louisiana soil with the same rapidity as gravel.  Since these shells were 
found in many places around New Orleans they were popularly used to pave the roads 
of the Crescent city and surrounding communities.

One source of these shells was found at the mouth of the Tangipahoa River.  
Although a complete record of the excavation of the shells from around the mouth 
of the river is unavailable, small scale removals of the clam shells certainly 
began by the first half of the nineteenth century.  There are several accounts of 
schooners stopping at the shell bank and loading many barrels of shells for the 
voyage across the lake to the Basin Canal near the rear of the French Quarter 
{later called the Old Basin Canal after a newer basin was constructed}. 

In 1865 the shell banks at the mouth of the Tangipahoa River changed hands as the 
Voisin family, which had owned the land since about 1804 sold the property to 
Charles Austin Eager of New Orleans.  Eager's company, Eager, Ellerman and Company 
began larger scale excavation.  Mr. Eager hired someone to live on the shell bank 
and handle the excavation and sales of the shells.  Fritz Schlutter {also spelled 
Schlater} was hired by Mr. Eager to be his watchman and sales agent.  Although 
"Mr. Fritz" was said to be a German fellow, he is probably the Austrian born Fritz 
Schlater, age 38, with a wife Caroline, age 45 and also from Austria, who appears 
on the 1870 census in that area.  "Mr. Fritz" lived in a little house on the shell 
bank near the old cemetery, raised a garden and had cattle and hogs grazing on the 
bank.  Fritz and his wife continued to live in this house until the shell 
excavations began to undermine the house and he moved about a mile and half up the 
river.  Fritz continued to supervise the operations at the shell bank over the 
next thirty-some years, even after the property changed hands.  He died sometime 
around 1904-1908 and he and his wife were buried in the small cemetery near the 
mouth of the river close to where they had lived for so many years.

During the years from 1869 to 1896, numerous schooners carried untold loads of 
shells from the Tangipahoa River.  There are fragmentary accounts of schooner 
captains and their crews taking the mollusk shells from the mouth of the river.  A 
Mr. McGin repeatedly used a cart to haul the shells to his schooner in a very 
labor intensive process.  James C. Weaver in his ship the Crescent City, made many 
trips from the river to the New Basin Canal.  The schooner Flower sailed twice 
from the Tangipahoa River within one week in April 1871, carrying five hundred 
barrels of shells on each trip.  Captain Theodore Monroe Hurst in his schooner 
Charles Perry, and Captain George Thorn in his schooner made regular trips from 
the Tangipahoa shell banks to New Orleans.

The shell banks changed hands again in September 1896 when the Jahncke Navigation 
Company purchased the property and kept "Mr. Fritz" as the resident supervisor.  
The Jahncke company led by Fritz Jahncke and his son Ernest L. Jahncke began 
larger scale excavation at the shell banks.  Using the dredge boats David and 
Eagle with a twelve inch steam powered suction hose, mass quantities of shells 
were removed and loaded onto waiting barges.  Barges like the Neptune, Jupiter, 
and Margaret, would be filled with 1,500 to 1,800 barrels of shells each, and 
then be towed to the Old Basin in New Orleans by the towboat Claribelle commanded 
by James F. Redding.  The same vessels performed the same functions at other times 
at the Tchefuncta River and Blind River where the company also operated shell and 
sand excavation sites.

Operations continued at the Tangipahoa and numerous other sites around the lake.  
Sometimes there was a need for massive quantities of shells for projects such as 
the construction of the first highway from New Orleans to Ponchatoula in the 
mid-1920's.  By 1933, suction dredges in Lake Pontchartrain made the on-shore 
operations less cost effective.  Shell dredging in the lake was halted about 1990 
in an effort to clear up the lake waters from the mud and silt stirred up by the 
dredging and also to prevent any heavy metals that had settled on the lake bottom 
from being re-circulated and ingested by marine life.  Today the lake waters are 
clearer and the rangia clams go about their business of filtering lake water, and 
involuntarily providing a food source for other marine life. 

The shell banks that are now exposed at the mouth of the Tangipahoa are not the 
same banks that were fronting the lake when schooners made frequent runs across 
the lake.  The material excavated from the shore line, the subsidence of the 
Louisiana coast, and the rise of coastal waters have all combined to move the 
shore at the mouth of the river north and further inland. 

When you next see some small seemingly insignificant clam shells at the edge of a 
local road or drive think for a moment of the hardy workers who dug these shells 
and sailed them across the lakes to their final destination.

Anyone with comments, questions, or additional information about Ponchatoula's 
rich heritage may call Jim Perrin at 386-4476.