Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, September 30, 1997

Krotz Springs founded by early developer

by Jim Bradshaw

About 1898 or 1899, he got wind of a huge tract of land near Marksville in Avoyelles Parish that he could buy for a song. Much of it was still forested with valuable timber.

He came down to Louisiana and took a 10-day option on 109,000 acres for $2,000. When the 10 days were up, he had not been able to find the rest of the money he needed to buy the land, so he took the sellers to court, tying up the property in litigation and giving himself the time to come up with the money he needed.

Next he turned his attention to St. Landry Parish, where about 20,000 acres of woodland in the Atchafalaya Basin, the Soniat-Lyons tract, was being offered for sale. He bought that, too, and set up a sawmill to trim the trees being brought out of the swamp. The sawmill was situated on the natural bank of the Atchafalaya River, which at that time had no levee. The river had silted up at this point to form a slight rise. A few homes were hastily thrown up near the mill. The first settlement was known as Latania, after the bayou of the same name.

Krotz made good money on this investment, too. And then he found out that he was possibly sitting atop an untapped pool of oil. He made connections with some wildcat drillers and put down the first oil well in St. Landry Parish.

The primitive wooden rig was set up on the banks of the Atchafalaya River, not far from the present railroad bridge. When the well got down to about 2,400 feet, it blew a gusher of water. The drillers had tapped into an artesian well of terrific pressure. It became Krotz's spring, the water supply for the town that began to develop around the sawmill.

In 1909, the post office agreed to establish a branch there, but refused to accept the name Latania because there was already a community by that name. The obvious alternate was Krotz Springs, the name under which the village was later incorporated.

Krotz helped his namesake town's development along, sometime with a bit of exaggeration. An early advertisement urges: "Buy Lots in Krotz Springs, The Coming Health Resort of the South." According to Krotz's advertisement, "The water from this well flows from a depth of 2,400 feet and will cure all kinds of Stomach, Kidney, and Bowel trouble and Indigestion. It will cure Rheumatism, will Dissolve and Remove Gall Stones and Gravel from the Bladder and is a Sure Cure for Malaria." Besides, that, he says, it is "The Finest Bathing Water in the World."

Besides selling lots next to the well, Krotz bottled the water and sold it across the country.