Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, September 30, 1997

Lawtell combination of two family names

by Jim Bradshaw

The first Littell to come to St. Landry Parish was Capt. Eliakim Littell , who came from New Jersey, and who owned land east of Opelousas. Dr. Robert Hart Littell was his son and the first of a long line of doctors who would serve St. Landry Parish.

Lawler and one of the Littells laid out the first subdivision and plat for the town of Lawtell sometime before 1916. The post office at Lawtell was established Aug.1, 1947, when J.M. LaFleur applied for the assignment. Before that, postal service was by rural carrier from Opelousas.

Lawler was one of the directors of an irrigation canal company that began planning in 1902 to build a canal 250 feet wide and 75 miles long from Washington, through St. Landry and Acadia parishes to Bayou Nezpiqué, and then into Calcasieu Parish. They planned then to build a railroad line alongside the canal to haul the rice crop that would be grown on more than 500,000 acres that would have been irrigated by the canal waters.

By the next year, even those ambitious plans had grown. The canal would be dug deep enough to allow barge and steamboat traffic. That would give a water route, linked to Bayou Courtableau at Washington, providing a water route from Calcasieu Parish to the Mississippi River - in essence, the first Intracoastal Waterway.