Louisiana - Whitney Plantation

The Whitney Plantation, Edgard

This inscription is near the entrance to the museum and helps explain why this museum, alone of all the plantations in Louisiana, spotlights the experience of the enslaved people who lived here, rather than those who owned them.

Directly inside the front door are exhibits that give background to slavery in the US (such as the trans-Atlantic slave trade), information about the family that owned this plantation, and explanation of the sugar cane crop grown and processed here.

Alternatives to African slaves:

The African slave trade began in central Africa by Africans:

Thus, Europeans tapped into the African slave market to find workers to help build a new country.


The story of this plantation:

Ambrose Haydel (or Heidel or Aidle) was 18 when he left Germany for Louisiana, arriving in 1721.  He bought this plantation in 1752, first growing foodstuffs to use and to sell, then switching to indigo as a solid cash crop.

the indigo crop

a quote from Voltaire; the demise of indigo

The transition from indigo to sugar didn't take long and it soon became the dominant crop in Atlantic slave societies.  70% of the enslaved people who were shipped from Africa came to the sugar plantations in the New World (which is a pretty staggering statistic).

beginning the sugar industry

sugar cane grows to 12' tall; the edges of leaves are sharp;
workers easily got sliced open

When the cane plants were growing, the workers had to tend them.  Cane needs water to grow, and the rows between the plants had standing water - in which the workers also had to stand for up to 16 hours/day.  They often got trench foot, a condition associated with trench warfare in WWI, but that existed long before.  There were also such natural hazards as rattlesnakes, cottonmouth snakes and alligators.  Workers were seldom given shoes, so had to deal with these conditions barefoot.

processing the sugar cane crop

a medium-size kettle

a large kettle

Once harvested, the cane was ground between millstones that operated continuously and were powerful enough that if a worker got a limb caught in them, they'd suck in his entire body before anyone could help.

Workers extracted cane juice from the milled cane plants and boiled out impurities, using kettles shown in these photos (above).  The juice went first into the largest kettle where it was boiled, then ladled into a smaller kettle and boiled, then into an even smaller kettle and boiled, and finally into the smallest kettle.  There it was let to settle and crystallize, producing unrefined sugar.  An enslaved worker had to stand between the metal kettles sitting on fires and ladle the boiling juice from one pot to another.  (That all this happened in October-January in no way means they were glad to be so close to the fires.)

In the plantation's best year, it produced 400,000 pounds of unrefined sugar.

This photo is the field next door to where the tour was held.  It was planted with sugar cane last month and will grow until October.  The day was dismal so the green of the field doesn't show up well in my photo.

A few of the original buildings are still on the grounds, though the slave quarters are not among them.  What we saw were slave quarters moved here from other plantations because they're identical to those that were here.

slave quarters

overseer's house

kitchen for the master's food -
our tour guide is on the left

the main house

The main house was built in 1790 and is an excellent example of a raised Creole cottage, as this style is called.  Although there are rooms on the ground floor, the family kept few valued items down there but instead primarily used the upper floor.  This plantation sits directly across the street from the dike along the Mississippi River, and since the dike wasn't built back then, they had frequent flooding to contend with.

If you want to enlarge that photo of the big house, you might be able to see that the upper floor looks like it's made of marble.  Instead, it's cypress boards painted to mimic marble.  Our guide said the house has begun to sink into the Mississippi's mud and cracks are beginning to show.  They haven't yet figured out how to handle the problem.

Although the levee was built by the US Corps of Engineers, the foundations were laid long before that by enslaved workers because, except in cities, early levees were left to adjoining landowners to deal with.


Slave revolts:

Because a myth persists that the enslaved people were happy with their lot in life, the museum has several exhibits that describe various revolts, beginning with those enslaved in Africa.

300+ revolts in 340 years is almost 1/year

Experiences of the enslaved:

By far the majority of the plantation and of the tour was devoted to the true stories of those who had been enslaved.  As part of FDR's WPA during the Depression, the Federal Writers Project interviewed former slaves.  This was in 1936, 70 years after the Civil War, so most people interviewed had been young when they were living as slaves.  There were many more stories than I had time to photograph, but I'm including what I have here.

Women were sold as "breeders" to make more slave stock

The stories are as varied as the individuals who lived them.  Some people remember being treated well, while others quite clearly don't have such pleasant memories.

And thanks to a belief in white supremacy and the power struggle that continued far beyond the Civil War, the institution of slavery was able to mutate into different forms.  One of those was convict labor.

There was, of course, a great deal more information about the workers, the system of slavery, and the history of the US at the museum.  I've focused on only part of what's available there.  Despite the very high price of admission, I can certainly recommend the tour to anyone who's able to stand on their feet for 90 minutes or more, though I think it's handicap-accessible also - there just wasn't any place to sit and rest.

Louisiana - Day 11 - Bayous and parishes

Lake Fausse Pointe State Park, St. Martinville
Tuesday, 11 February 2020

today's route

Along the bayous
I saw a whole flock of egrets that seemed to be grazing on the Bayou Segnette levee when I was leaving the campground.

The weather report included fog warnings this morning, so I left the campground earlier than I'd intended because I was afraid I'd have to drive more slowly than usual.

I passed through St. Charles Parish - "Where There's More To Life."

I entered St. John "The Baptist" Parish (as it's stated on the highway sign).  The parish is named after the church in Edgard that was built by German immigrants who populated the coast in the mid-1700s, and I passed by the church and the historical marker along the road.  I didn't know at the time it was where the parish name came from but I did know it was architecturally stunning, especially for such a small town.  This internet photo is a little fuzzy but maybe you'll get the idea.

Edgard, incidentally, is the parish seat despite being an unincorporated community.  I guess they're a little casual about these things down here.  Edgard is also the location of the Whitney Plantation, which I'd missed seeing the other day and now had come  back to for a tour.

I'd made a 10:00 tour reservation, and Google said a normal driver could get there from last night's campground in 46 minutes.  Well, that's likely at least an hour's drive for me, and I thought the fog might make it even longer, so I left the campground earlier than I'd intended.  But I did make it in just over an hour, which was a relief.  And I had enough time to walk the dogs and fix them a couple of Kongs with peanut butter to keep them occupied while I was on the 1½ hour tour.

Whitney Plantation
I'm going to do a separate post on my tour there, because there was a lot of information about life on a sugar cane plantation for the enslaved people who worked here.  But if you want a Wikipedia overview of the plantation, here's the link.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Whitney-Plantation

Continuing through the parishes and bayous
I only drove 140 miles today, which would be nothing much on a flat straight highway, but it took me hours on these roads.  I passed through pieces of multiple parishes and crossed and drove beside multiple bayous along the way.  This part of Louisiana seems like it's more than a quarter water.

I passed through St. James Parish and Lafourche Parish, passing fields and canals and small towns along the way.  I entered Terrebonne Parish - "Louisiana's Bayou Country."  The parish seat is Houma (pronounced HOME-ah), that I'd wanted to visit just because of its name.  But the side trip would make the afternoon drive much longer than I had time for, so I passed it up this time.

I saw a sign saying I was entering the Atchafalaya National Heritage Area.  This link is the best brief description I could find about this area.   https://www.louisianatravel.com/atchafalaya-national-heritage-area  If you want more, that link includes a link to the main heritage area website, which I found too complicated for the quick overview I wanted.

At Schriever, I passed a sign with an arrow pointing to Bayou Plantations (it said).

In quick progression, I passed through Assumption Parish and St. Mary Parish ("The Cajun Coast").

Numerous waterways either flow into or are created by the Atchafalaya River, the basin of which is (I think) the foundation of this national heritage area.  And as if those waterways weren't enough, the Intracoastal Waterway flows through here, too - I crossed it at Amelia.

Before Morgan City, I found myself on a long, straight, elevated road, which I guessed was taking me over the Atchafalaya River and surrounding water bodies.  Not as long as the elevated road that I-10 becomes to the north of here, but similar and because the I-10 section is actually labeled as the Atchafalaya, that's why I figure this section is likely downstream of that one.

Lionel Grizzaffi Bridge

Though I might be wrong about that because between Morgan City and Berwick, I came to a bridge labeled Lionel Grizzaffi Bridge.  Now, neither this nor the long elevated road before it said what body of water they were spanning, but Wikipedia says the Grizzaffi Bridge crosses the Atchafalaya River.

I've been finding Louisiana isn't much for labeling its bodies of water.  Maybe they've got so many of them they'll bust the state's budget if they put up signs at every bridge that crosses even just the main waterways, let alone the smaller ones.  Or maybe they figure if you need to know, you'll already know.  But it's not good for curious tourists like me.

In Patterson, I passed a sign directing me to the Wedell-Williams Aviation/Cypress Sawmill Museum.  The idea of combining these two particular subjects in one museum seemed to me like it must be a mistake so I looked it up.  No mistake.  There's a good description of it at this link.   https://www.louisianatravel.com/aviation-and-cypress-sawmill-museum  I'm sorry I'll have to miss it.

I passed through the small town of Calumet - common name in many states.

I've been seeing huge fields of yellow flowers along the road.

Many Louisiana roads are really bumpy and I don't think they have to be.  The seams in the roadway aren't level, and I'm bumping over every single seam along the road - which I think occur every 10' or so - which means constant bumping.  All over the state.  And that's when the roadway's in good repair.  It's much worse when it's been patched or needs to be.  Very wearing on people driving vehicles with less than wonderful suspension systems.  I mean, this RV isn't even a Honda, let alone a Cadillac.

I turned off US Hwy 90 at Franklin and headed into the hinterlands.  And the farther I went, the more absurd it seemed that this was the route to a state park.  But this time I got directions from both Google and Bing, and both said this was the route.  The alternative was to have gone around via I-10, which was not only a longer route that would take me through almost zero countryside but was also the only road I'd previously been on in Louisiana, and I wanted my month here to be something else.

So I turned on Parish Route 3211, then on Main Street, then on Katy Bridge App Rd. (I never could figure out what "app" means), which crossed Bayou Teche (per a sign), then on State Rt. 87 (nice and smooth, what a relief), then on Charenton Beach Road, and then on the Atchafalaya Spillway Levee Road, which is supposed to arrive 14 miles later at the state park.  Some of these roads had actual street signs, so I usually knew I was on the right roads.

Along the way I passed what I now know are sugar cane fields, scattered houses, and a Texas Petroleum Company plant.

Bayou Teche, by the way, was once part of the main route of the Mississippi River, back several thousand years ago.  In its gradual and meandering way, the river slowly moved eastward, depositing silt as it went, leaving this and many other waterways behind.

For a few miles, the levee road was a gravel road along the base of a levee with a 30 mph speed limit (fat chance I could go that fast).  It ran alongside a body of water that looked like a bayou, but I think it's actually water flowing from another body of water that's an offshoot of the Atchafalaya River.  (That river and its basin include an awful lot of water.)  The bayou-pretender was on my left, and the levee was on my right, which seemed odd until I looked at a map later.  That's when I found that the levee is almost certainly there to hold back the Atchafalaya River, which is on the east side of that offshoot I mentioned above, and that's on the east side of this levee.  The offshoot of the offshoot, which is what I was driving along, soon emptied into Lake Fausse Pointe on my left.  

some of the 100+ pelicans at Lake Fausse Pointe

Back near Charenton where I turned on the Levee Road, I saw a string of old motor homes and shacks and houseboats along the Bayou.  One of them had a name: SA-SI-BON, their sign said.  I saw what must have been at least a hundred White Pelicans hanging around in the lake.  A lot of them were sitting on left-over pilings from old piers, like the ones in my photo (sorry it's fuzzy), and others were swimming in the choppy lake (the wind was really blowing).

a section of Levee Road

That levee road nearly did me in.  The farther down it I went, the more surreal the whole thing became, because the road changed from gravel to dirt, and became even more bumpy than the gravel road and included serious ruts thanks to recent rains.  I still had half the distance to go when I was ready to call it quits, but it was way too late by then to change my mind.

I had to go very slowly over the bumps and ruts, partly to keep all my worldly household goods from falling out of cupboards onto the floor, partly to keep my critters from ditto, and partly to keep my head from exploding with a headache.  It was seriously crazy.  At several points I found myself saying, "This is Wacko," both in my head and (as the bumps and ruts continued) out loud.

Finally, a few hundred feet from the state park entrance, I came to paved road.  Apparently the bit that comes from I-10 is paved, and I came via The Scenic Route.

As I drove into the campground, I saw a sign advertising the LA Dutch Oven Society.  I found online that they've got chapters all over the state, with meetings called Dutch Oven Gatherings (D.O.G.s) on a different weekend each month, usually at a state park.  The one meeting on the 1st Saturday each month meets here at Lake Fausse Pointe State Park.  Another meets at Bogue Chitto State Park and still another meets at Bayou Segnette State Park, both of which I've stayed at.  All the chapters have names and one of them calls itself Le Chien Cookers (presumably because of the D.O.G.s).

When I checked in, I asked about wildlife, and the ranger assured me there were lots of deer, alligators, snakes, raccoons, and she kept listing so many species I stopped paying attention.  Anyway, she had me with the first 3.

And one of the first things I noticed about the campground is that it was half flooded.  Only a few of the campsites were unusable, but there was a lot of standing water all over everywhere.  The mosquitoes are going to be fierce in another month if they don't have a bad freeze.

Louisiana - Day 10

Bayou Segnette State Park
Monday, 10 February 2020

I spent the day in the campground, catching up on blog posts and walking the dogs in various places around the campground.

There are 2 boardwalks across the swamp areas in the middle of the camping loops, providing shortcuts to the bathrooms.  They look like this:

These aren't 2 photos of the same place - they're just long boardwalks.







Along the way, the vegetation looks like this:

All I saw in these areas were birds, and all I heard were frogs.  But the campground host told me they have raccoons, armadillos, and snakes, and he said campers had reported seeing deer.

I know they have mosquitoes because one bit me while I was talking to him.  This being only early February, I thought that was really rude.

Besides all the birds I saw yesterday - and again today - I saw a flock of chickadees, and heard them making a lot of noise.

Speaking of noise, I took the dogs along a different swamp area near the bayou and the frogs there sounded like a Geiger counter.  Really.  And their calls got much louder and closer together as we got nearer where they were, just like a Geiger counter finding uranium.

The campground host didn't know of any alligators here, but I believed to the depth of my soul that they might be.  I've been assured that they're not active during the winter cold months, which was not at all reassuring since the temp got up nearly to 80° today and won't get much below 60° tonight.  That doesn't sound like a winter temperature, even for a reptile, to me.  I'm not particularly afraid of them for myself, but I'm very afraid of them for Dexter who seems just the type to get his nose bitten off.

I forgot to mention a couple of days ago that I went by the town of Gramercy, home of Zapp's Potato Chips.  I'd have stopped but couldn't find any indication that they give tours at their plant.  I did buy some of them, though, not having tried them before.

the outside

the inside

Those were really good chips.  I don't usually care for flavored chips but these were really good.  Too spicy (as in hot) for my mom to have liked them but just right for me.

And I don't know what the "craw" is about in the "crawtators" because these were just regular potato chips as far as I could tell.  But good ones.

This is a nice campground - except the showers are lousy.  But in general I'm impressed with Louisiana's state campground system so far.

Louisiana - Day 9 - to the mouth of the Mississippi

Bayou Segnette State Park
Sunday, 9 February 2020

There are a lot of birds in this campground.  I saw a flock of at least 50 Robins; a Great Egret was fishing in a swamp not far from our campsite; I heard a Pileated Woodpecker pecking away at a tree; lots of chickadees all over.

The campsites are on two loops of a half-mile each.  In the middle of each loop is swampy land where there must be lots of life - I know there are frogs because I heard them.

Part of the state park is a heavily-used boat launch into the bayou, so I drove over to take a look.

that sign says this bayou is a manatee area

This is what Bayou Segnette looks like.  Bigger than I'd thought, looks more like a river to me.

Today I wanted to find the end of the Great River Road and the mouth of the Mississippi.

today's route

Louisiana has a narrow peninsula of land that's split in half lengthwise by the Mississippi.  There's a string of small towns along the road - Belle Chasse, Cedar Grove, Ironton, West Pointe à la Hache, Port Sulfur, Jesuit Bend (settled by Jesuits in the 1700s who were the first to farm satsumas here), Myrtle Grove (a community built on stilts), Buras, Boothville and Venice.

Of course there's a levee all along the west side of the road between it and the river, but I was surprised to find that along part of the road there was a levee along the east side as well.  But you can see from the map that the land gets very narrow toward the end, with plenty of water on both sides.

I'd barely started down the road - it's State Route 23 - when I came to a bridge/tunnel that I had no warning about.  The southbound side of the road went through the tunnel, and I saw no signs at all telling me what the clearance was.  All I could do was hope that it'd be high enough for us since Rt. 23 seemed to be the only road south, so trucks must pass through there.  I found out later that not all trucks do use that route, but the clearance was 13.5' so I was okay.  I don't care much for tunnels and this one went down quite steeply - very unnerving.  Fortunately, it was short.

The northbound traffic got the bridge - a very steep one - but at least I could see it coming so had some warning.  A sign northbound told me these were needed for the Intracoastal Waterway that passed through the peninsula.  The tunnel, by the way, was built in 1956 and was the first fully automated tunnel in the world (it automatically changed the air in the tunnel every 2 minutes).  The bridge wasn't built until 1968, when the traffic level got too great for the tunnel.  I can't tell you how very glad I was to realize that I didn't have to cope with that deep, narrow tunnel back when it was 2-way traffic, instead of 2 lanes 1 way as it is now.

When I looked up the Intracoastal Waterway to get some information (3,000 miles long, from Boston to Brownsville), I found a pending lawsuit in Louisiana brought by bordering landowners who are suing the US Corps of Engineers.  This link is to a brief summary of the interesting circumstances that led to the suit.   http://icwwclaims.com

A sign told me I was now in Plaquemines Parish.

I passed a Naval Air National Reserve Base.  And a Chevron gas plant.  Also a Phillips 66 oil refinery and the Chevron Oronite plant (manufactures plastics).

The road was lined with massive power lines that went on for miles.  I forgot to notice where they were headed, why such enormous amounts of power would be needed.

Houses were strung all along the road, including some very fancy ones that backed right up to the levee (demonstrating more faith in the Corps of Engineers than I have).  I passed Bobby's Citrus Farm.  In fact, I passed several citrus orchards along the way.

I saw something on the side of the road that I was afraid was a dog, but it turned out to be a big sack of French bread loaves, the very long ones.  A much happier sight to see.

I went by what looked like a major shipping operation at International Marine Terminals.  I saw an acre of chutes and conveyor belts, and huge piles of coal.

these are just some of the contraptions in use there

I passed fields with a lot of cows, a few horses, scattered trees across some very flat land.  Marine support businesses all along the levee.

I realized when I passed a house decorated for Mardi Gras that I haven't seen any Valentine's Day decorations anywhere.  It's all Mardi Gras everywhere.

I passed several borrow pits, which surprised me because I always think of them as being in hilly country.  But I know they were borrow pits because they had signs saying so.

I passed a sign indicating I could cross the levee for the road to Grand Bayou Indian Village.  But when I looked it up I found that this community is one of the few tribal communities accessible only by boat.  They're trying to get federal recognition of their tribe, but I'm thinking that might need a Democrat in the White House, Republicans not seeming too responsive to such issues these days (though they used to be).

I passed a lot of facilities labeled Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co., which I think sends liquified natural gas north from the Gulf Coast into the Midwest and East Coast.

Because the highly navigable Mississippi River was just over the levee, I kept seeing tops of big ships as they passed along the river, or stopped at service companies.










Almost from the beginning of the road, I was dealing with crosswinds, and they got much stronger as I went farther down the peninsula.  I had to pay attention to the road more than I wanted to, just to counteract those winds.

I passed South Plaquemines High School out in the middle of nowhere - I mean no communities nearby, which seemed odd except it must serve the whole peninsula, so I guess this was somewhere in the middle.  It had clearly been recently built, probably after Katrina.  The unusual thing about it is that, as you can see, it's completely elevated.  I don't think there's anything on the ground floor except pillars and the entrance.  The other side must have a great view of the Mississippi.

All the churches I passed along the way were having Sunday services and, based on the numbers of cars parked outside, were enthusiastically attended.

I passed the turn for Fort Jackson, site of a Civil War battle: it was a Confederate fort that was taken by the Union navy in 1862 and then used as a Union prison.  Katrina caused a lot of damage, destroying many of the historical exhibits and a lot of the fort's structure.  Though it had been declared a National Historic Landmark, the parish is apparently making no effort to restore it.  I think there's a Visitor Center, but I can't tell if what's left of the fort's still open or not.  A shame to let history slip away like that.

I saw pelicans, singly and in flocks.  I saw occasional Anhingas.

I saw a variety of houses from those sitting on a slab to those elevated to the 3rd story.

I passed a sign for Seatigers Spearfishing Rodeo, held annually in August.  Somehow I thought that had something to do with boats and sportfishermen, but the group says it's the oldest dive club in Louisiana.  Founded in 1959, they don't just scuba dive, they spearfish while they're down there.  They offer lots of prizes for various kinds of fish caught (speared) during this "rodeo" and I'm sure have a great time.

I passed several flying companies operating at small airfields, and their parking lots were jam-packed with parked pickup trucks.  I finally figured out they must be helicoptering workers out to oil rigs.

Toward the end of the road, the vegetation leaned heavily toward scrub trees and sea oats.

Venice
I'll say right now I don't think I ever found Venice - odd, since there's not a lot of land to lose it on.  There didn't seem to be more houses along the road near the end of it than I'd seen anywhere else along it.  At the end of Route 23, there's an ACE Hardware store that I think is still open, though it looked dusty and abandoned.  But there was a car parked in front of it when I drove back by.  Next door is a place that was once a restaurant but now is quite clearly closed.  And that was about it for the end of that road.

Of course, the road kept going for quite a way after that, and eventually I saw a road sign saying it was called Tidewater Road - which it certainly was because the water came right up to the road in places.  It kept going and going and I wasn't seeing anything more than the pickup-parked-by-the-roadside-and-a-fisherman-on-a-bucket outfit at intervals along the road.

Then suddenly I came to a High Water Warning sign by the road and decided I'd gone far enough.  But I still hadn't found Venice, so I turned down a road labeled Venice Boat Harbor Road.  That ended up at a boat harbor (surprise!) and a restaurant and little houses on stilts.

part of the shrimp fishing fleet, I think

The houses faced the water (just a few feet away) and most had boats or trucks parked underneath them.  My guesses are they either rent like condos at a beach or this is where some of the staff of the businesses live.

I don't actually think that's the Mississippi River all this is on.  I think not far past where Venice is/isn't is where it finally dumps into the Gulf of Mexico, and the roads I took from there are running along the little waterways that branch off it.  I think this might be part of what's called "The Jump" because it's the jumping-off point for fishing large numbers of species in those small waterways.  There's both salt- and fresh-water in those waterways so fish that live in both kinds of water can be found.  This article describes some of the incredible variety of species found here.   https://www.thejump.net/Venice-LA

Heading back north
I'm sure I saw a Bald Eagle - that white head and their size make it hard to confuse them with anything else.  And the bird book says they're common in winter along the Mississippi River and, in fact, live in this part of LA year round.  Pretty neat.

I took most of the photos (above) on my way back north, because the facilities were on the east side of the road.  Though it was a fairly good road with shoulders (for once), I still had no chance at all of getting out of the RV, which is why it figures in many of these.

The state park I'm staying in (which doesn't appear on the AAA map, for some reason) is in the town of Westwego.  On the radio today I heard them mention the 1977 disaster of a grain elevator exploding there, so I looked it up.  And it was a disaster: a 25-story grain elevator exploded and a concrete tower fell on a nearby office building; the shock waves  could be felt as far away as New Orleans and 36 people were killed 2 days before Christmas.  Turns out they still, 50 years later, don't know exactly what caused it because the explosion was so thorough there was no trace evidence left.  Their best guess is that an unusually high level of static electricity generated a spark that ignited the highly flammable grain dust.  It was one of several grain elevator explosions within 2 years, so Congress held hearings and revamped regulations.

Sometimes the history of the places I'm visiting isn't always easy to spot.  I just got lucky with this radio story.