Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, September 30, 1997

Palmetto was first named for biblical town of Goshen

by Jim Bradshaw

They and others later settled along what was known as the old Military Road which ran from Ville Platte to Simmesport. An 1861 Civil War map shows a "good road" going through what is now Palmetto.

At that time, a road to Melville branched off at Palmetto, and the Atchafalaya River could be crossed at Morgan's Ferry near there.

Zénon Rideau had at first established himself at Grand Prairie but moved to the Palmetto area about 1860. He would also eventually own land along Bayou Petite Prairie and along Dry Bayou.

The first white settlers in the area came about 1778, when Ulysses Soileau and his partner, Dolze Meaux, moved their families from Prairie Faquetaïque to a place two miles northeast of the present town. Soileau and Meaux were cattlemen, and were looking for a place to shelter their cattle during the winter.

As Cheryl Bilum Myers explains in her history of Palmetto, "The open, tree-less prairie afforded no protection against the cold winds and driving rains. Each winter, beginning in 1873, Soileau and Meaux drove their cattle from the prairie to the nearest unfenced, wooded area, which at that time began in what is now Lebeau and included all the area from there to Melville. A camp, or shack, was built in the woods and the men took turns living there to keep watch on their cattle.

"When spring came, a big roundup was held. All the Soileau and Meaux friends and relatives joined forces to ride the woods in search of the herd. Makeshift corrals were made to pen up the cattle in preparation for the long drive back to the prairie."

After the railroad was built in 1882, some French families came into the region, and a small settlement began to spring up. It was at first called Goshen, from the biblical place of that name.

In 1882, Simon Moses bought a small piece of land at what would become Palmetto and established a trading post there, offering calico and household goods for hides and furs caught by local trappers. Moses sold the place almost immediately to Wesley Budden, who had come there from Port Barre.

In March 1888, the Palmetto post office was officially established with Budden as postmaster. The name Goshen had to be changed since there was another settlement with that name.

According to old accounts, "It was a Yankee woman named Mrs. (Mary Simpson) Sylvester who named Palmetto. She owned Holly Grove Plantation here, and she told them to let her name it when they went to change the name. She thought so much of those palmettos around here, she named it Palmetto." According to one account, palmetto leaves were nailed up on the railroad depot until a proper sign could be made.

Palmetto has built up on the south side of the track because no room was left for expansion on the north side where the town had begun to take shape. The men building the railroad in 1882 dug a deep pit on the north side of the track, using the soil to build up the track bed.

Wesley Budden figured large in the history of Palmetto before the turn of the century. He operated one of the first stores there and was the first postmaster. He also built the first cotton gin at Palmetto.

The town was incorporated in 1916, and "Old Man Ike" Isaacson was named the first mayor. One of the first things he did was to get into fight with the railroad, according to recollection by Leonard Gaansen, who was on the first town council.

"Old Man Ike was mad because the trains wouldn't slow down and let passengers get on at Palmetto," Gaansen recounted. "Ike wrote to the railroad officials in New Orleans and everything, but nothing did any good. Finally, he proposed an ordinance, and it passed, making trains slow down to three miles an hour when they came through town. I just knew we didn't have any right to try to regulate the speed of that train and told Old Man Ike so, but, anyway, they voted to regulate the speed to three miles an hour.

"Well, the railroad officials wrote back and told him that the ordinance wouldn't hold. ... After that, the men on the train increased their speed when the train passed through Palmetto. They'd wave at Old Man Ike and just die laughing, and Old Man Ike would stand in the door and see 'em and rave and cuss -- but there wasn't nothing he could do about it."

The Brewer- Neinstedt sawmill began operation at Palmetto in 1923, stirring new commerce in the community. It was not long after that that Muse Keller, a pharmacist, opened a drug store. He later expanded to include running the post office and a large general mercantile store.