Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, September 30, 1997

Melville grew on the river and the railroad

by Jim Bradshaw

Melville got its name from Melville Anderson, the son of Bay Anderson, one of the early settlers in the area.

It made its fortune because of its location on the Atchafalaya River, first as a place for river commerce, and then as a crossing point for the railroad. A Melville newspaper, The Atchafalaya Waves, of Feb. 20, 1908, reports:

"C.W. Krotz, the daddy of Melville, is arranging to put on a big sale on the South side in the next 30 days. ... On the first of April, Mr. Krotz will meet here for the purpose of going into the matter of financing the building of a railroad from this point to Krotz Springs, and will also look into the advisability of extending the road north of here to Columbia in Caldwell Parish."

Mrs. Minnie Shamp was a young girl at the time of the railroad construction and was interviewed for a 1955 newspaper article:

"When I first remember Melville," she said, "there was nothing there but Irishman's camps and the convicts working on the railroad. The Irishmen had contracted to build the road, and they worked convicts in those days. I remember when they were working on 'the dump,' the hill atop which Melville's rail is laid.

"I was living in Melville in '83, when the bridge was completed," she continued, "and I saw the first train go over. Up until then, they had built the railroad up to the river and transported the trains by boats across the river... Before the railroad went through, we used to travel from our place eight or 10 miles above Melville to Washington. There wasn't anything here but woods and those camp-huts where the Irishmen working on the railroad lived. Where the town is, there was a field, cleared and cultivated. The biggest part of the town was along the levee and at first there were only the commissaries for the convicts building the railroad. Gradually, men came and put up stores."

They also put up fish businesses and ice houses, and just before the turn of the century some 50 barrels of fish -- caught in the Atchafalaya and other nearby lakes and waterways -- were being shipped from Melville each day.

"There were five or six fish docks here," according to the recollection of Mrs. Lou Jackson, another early resident who was interviewed in 1955. "1 believe it was '95 or '96 when the fishing business was at its height. I remember that the train spent a half hour here, loading fish. I know they shipped a good many of the fish to Texas.

"The steamboats docked here weekly, and we made the trip to Washington. It took 12 hours by river, going down the river. and up Courtableau. ... If we went by train to Washington, we had to go to Cheneyville and wait over there until the next day and catch a train to Washington.

"Showboats docked here about once a year. There were two of them -- French and Robertson's, and one -- I forget which -- had two boats," Mrs. Jackson remembered. "One of the boats carried animals that were penned like in a zoo. I saw my first silent movie on French's showboat back in '98 or '99.

"When the showboats were coming, you could hear the calliope playing 'way around the bend and we children would line up on the levee to see the showboat come up. Everybody went. There was nothing else to do, and we waited for those boats to come."

Floods have made their mark on Melville, but there were other disasters that made headlines there as well.

A fire on Oct. 11, 1917, destroyed 21 buildings at Melville, essentially the entire business district. In more recent times, the big news was the sinking of the Jane Smith, a $250,000 towboat making its maiden voyage, that went down at the railroad bridge on May 19, 1950.