Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 29, 1997

Flood of 1927 changed St. Martin

by Jim Bradshaw

During the 1800's, a Mississippi River flood was an almost annual thing. People who lived along it came to measure time by the hood years--1858, 1862, 1867, 1882, 1884, 1890, 1897, 1903, 1912, 1913, 1922. But it was the Flood of 1927 that everyone remembers today. It was the year the Mississippi rose higher than we had ever seen it rise before.

The Flood of 1927 altered conditions within the Atchafalaya Swamp and throughout St. Martin Parish as no other event since the arrival of the Acadians. That one event destroyed old established communities, eliminated a successful way of life for hundreds of people who lived in and off of the swamp, and forced the creation of new towns where there had been none before.

Millions upon millions of gallons of water rushed down the river toward the Gulf of Mexico. Before the river was done, south Louisiana would become a huge lake, 200 miles long, 50 to 100 miles wide. Ten thousand square miles in 20 parishes would be under water. And Louisiana would not be alone.

Some 16,570,627 acres were flooded in 170 counties in seven states. The numbers tell a part of that story: $102 million in crop losses in the Mississippi River Valley, 162,000 homes flooded, 41,487 buildings destroyed, 6,000 boats used in rescue work, 325,500 people cared for in Red Cross camps, 312,000 fed by the Red Cross in private homes, and as many as 500 people killed.

Even the swamp dwellers who lived in houseboats and who were normally immune to the dangers of flood waters fled their homes for shelters outside of the area.

An old photo shows part of Breaux Bridge hidden beneath 25 feet of water, another captures flood water almost window high at St. Peter's Church in New Iberia.

The people of Breaux Bridge and the surrounding area fled to Lafayette, many of them to be crowded into a tent village, two families to a 10-foot square tent. Officials counted 21,000 people in the camp at Lafayette. Those old photos show lines of refugees awaiting inoculations to protect them from the diseases the flood waters brought with them (and against those brought by a horde of prostitutes that flooded among the evacuees and the relief workers). In one of the old pictures, Dr. Walter Reed--for whom the famous hospital is named--is shown at the Red Cross headquarters set up at N. P. Moss School in Lafayette. He had come from Washington, D.C., to oversee the medical program here.

The flood that brought all of this to being had begun innocently enough. As one man would remember, "it started raining, and it just never did stop."

These rains, beginning in August and September 1926, first began to swell little streams feeding the Big Muddy. By the middle of October, the Illinois and Wabash would be over their banks. The Tennessee and Cumberland would spill over by December. The Ohio was next, in January. That same month, the Mississippi rose to flood heights on its way through.

And the rains did not quit. More than 11 inches of rain fell in New Orleans during February. All during the spring, heavy showers drenched the river's path from Cairo to New Orleans.

A downpour on March 12 stalled traffic around Alexandria and drove dozens of small streams over their banks. Other cloudbursts brought local flooding to Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas. All of this water had, somehow, to feed into the Mississippi River.

A levee broke at Laconia Circle, Ark., on March 29, covering more than 12,000 acres of farmland and sending 2,000 people fleeing. Torrential rains caused floods in Oklahoma and Kansas in early April. Eleven people died.

On April 16, the newspapers had worse news: "The first break in the main levee of the Mississippi River occurred near Doreno, Mississippi county, Missouri, early today, flooding a stretch of land for forty miles .... Thousands of acres of lowlands ...were under water. Water lapping over the top of the levee as a result of a heavy wind washed out a gap ninety feet wide, and as the waters rushed through it widened greatly ... Doreno, across the river from Hickman, Kentucky, where floods left more than 800 persons homeless yesterday, was apprehensive; and New Madrid, near where St. John's Bayou flows into the Mississippi, was anticipating the worst flood in its history."

A levee broke near Little Rock on April 18. One hundred thousand acres went under Arkansas River water. Red Cross workers at St. Louis said there were 35,000 persons homeless between Cairo and New Orleans.

From the Associated Press, April 21: "Death, famine, pestilence and war between men and the elements rode the ever increasing tide of the Father of Waters gulfward today in the greatest flood in the history of the Mississippi Valley ... Damage to property had already reached ... millions of dollars. Thousands of persons, driven from their homes by the angry waters, were suffering for food, clothing and shelter, while others who had braved the flood to stay in their homes had perished.

"... Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana, were battling ... against the encroachments of the river.... Diseases due to conditions in camps have broken out among refugees ... Nearly six hundred cases of measles, mumps and whooping-cough have been reported ...."

Fourteen inches of rain fell on New Orleans on Good Friday, April 15. Large parts of the town went underwater. Worse yet, 14 inches of rain also fell into the river next to the city. By April 22, some 20,000 men were sandbagging the levees between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, trying to raise them and brace them before the full force of the flood arrived.

Men began to recall the high river of 1922, when floods had threatened New Orleans. During that flood, the levee had suddenly broken at Poydras, 11 miles below the city-- spilling a flood across farms and plantations, but reducing the river's level at New Orleans. Poydras farmers had thought then that the levee had been deliberately opened, wrecking their homes and crops to spare the city, Now, in 1927, that did become the deliberate plan.

Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, and Major General Edgar Jadwin, chief of Army engineers, arrived at New Orleans on April 27 to oversee the flood work. The evacuation of the parishes below New Orleans had already begun.

On April 29, the levee was dynamited. But the swollen river fell just one-tenth of a foot at New Orleans during the next seven hours. That wasn't enough. Two tons more of dynamite were put to the levee down river. River waters began to rush through.

New Orleans was saved. But smaller south Louisiana communities could only watch and wait.

To the north of Acadian, 1,500 men were fighting the waters along the Red River, Bayou Rapides, and Bayou ties Glaises--a stream heavily leveed to protect Marksville, Cottonport, Moreauville, Simmesport, Plaucheville, and other small towns in Avoyelles Parish. The men were able to stay barely ahead of the flood until May 12, when a downpour saturated the levee. There was just too much water. On May 13 the levee broke on Bayou des Glaises, 70 miles north of Baton Rouge. Then, on May 17, the levee along the Atchafalaya River broke at Melville. A week later there was another major Atchafalaya River break at McCrea.

Avoyelles, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary and Iberia parishes would soon be inundated.

The last people to leave Breaux Bridge before their town was flooded, said they heard trees cracking and breaking as the water rushed toward them.

Mrs. W.I. Spencer lived on Morbihan plantation, six miles east of New Iberia. She would recall:

"There were hurried preparations made to leave--the water all the time silently ... creeping father and farther under ... houses, up (the) steps--this from the Bayou --it was coming from the bayou north of the plantation, too, but the big wave came rolling from seemingly nowhere, spreading over the whole hillside and coming over in ditches, furrows, low places, silently yet, but rushing as if being chased by some great monster.

"Then came a murmuring, a distant roaring -- everyone seemed to sense danger then and prepared to get on the highest ground and the tallest buildings. By this time water was rushing and roaring in all the ditches and drains over most of the hillside to the bayou. Above all you could hear children's cries, women's screams, and petitions to the Good Lord ...."

The Atchafalaya broke its east levee on May 24--flooding Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge, Assumption, Iberville, and Terrebonne, and part of Ascension parishes. On May 27, backwaters from Spanish Lake and Bayou Teche spilled into New Iberia and Morgan City.

It would take more than a month for the waters to drain lazily into the Gulf of Mexico. Then began the job of cleaning out, building back, starting over.

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).