a JEFFERSON DAVIS PARISH article

Cultures of Acadiana
a look at the French, Cajun, Creole, and Native American cultures of south Louisiana
(a project of Carencro High School - 721 West Butcher Switch Road, Lafayette, LA  70507)

Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, October 28, 1997

Settlers tried to grow oranges on Lake Arthur's shores

by Jim Bradshaw

Lakeside, on the south shore of Lake Arthur, was platted into town sites before the town of Lake Arthur, but never really got off the ground. It once had a post office, a hotel, a newspaper, and several stores, but that was a long time ago.

The driving forces behind the town were two men from Iowa, Dr. E. I. Hall and N. L. Miller, who thought that they could grow oranges in the area. They were not alone in the idea.

At the turn of the century, Seaman A. Knapp, a pioneer the development of the prairie rice crop, visited Japan and returned to Louisiana with several varieties of Japanese persimmons, plums, oranges, and other fruit trees. He thought each of them had good prospects in southern Louisiana, but the orange became the one that had at least limited commercial success for a while.

Daniel Dennett, an agricultural writer at the turn of the century, observed that the orange tree was extensively cultivated in Cameron and Calcasieu parishes (before Jefferson Davis was separated). He mentioned visiting two groves where production exceeded 100,000 oranges a year in each case. The orange trees, some of which he described as being a foot in diameter and none than 25 feet high, produced from 300 to 500 oranges each year.

Most of the crop was marketed at Galveston, where the oranges brought from $12 to $15 per thousand.

Unfortunately for the promising industry, the fruit was attacked first by insects, then by a blight that tended to destroy the orange before it reached maturity. Then several severe winters all but destroyed the groves.

A Northern visitor to southwest Louisiana in 1886 found the local custom of marketing their orange crop so quaint that he wrote to his hometown newspaper:

"The 'Cajuns' are great orange growers. They have a funny way ... of selling their crop. A buyer comes out when the trees are in bloom, and after a half dozen or more whittling matches, a bargain is struck for the prospective crop, the "Cajun" always demanding half the agreed price in advance. When this business is settled there is nothing more to do but to wait for nature to prepare another harvest."

This article is copyrighted © by the Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser and is used with permission.  This web site was originated through a grant awarded to Carencro High School (Joel Hilbun/Bobbi Marino, Grant Administrators) by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund - 8(g).